Old Bell System Land Line, image licensed for reuse by Infrogmation at Flickr
In my childhood during the late 60s and early 70s, nothing except AT&T phones existed. There were no answering machines, no “portable” phones, no fax machines, no dial-in internet via modems. Phones were leased from “the phone company,” not owned by consumers. A technician from AT&T had to come to one's house or office to install a phone, using hard-wired jacks later ruled out by the FCC (Wu 190). On the other hand, the system always worked. A dropped call was as inconceivable as advertising on radio when Herbert Hoover denounced it (Wu 74).
How quickly this changed after the AT&T breakup. Soon consumers faced the then-dizzying choice of three carriers for long distance: a Bell spin-on, Sprint, or MCI. Quaint sounding, isn't it, to have only three choices? Moreover, does it seem prehistoric that "long distance" would be a feature that would worry a consumer?
The irony here is that today, if you want a full-featured mobile service, how many choices do you have? I'm counting: AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint.
The process of creative destruction that Schumpter describes, and that so influences Wu's thinking (160-61), led to the miraculous phones you hold (like drug addicts!) in your palms. It's a fair speculation that AT&T would have been slow to bring such an innovation to market, if they'd ever brought it at all.
Personally, the disruptions of the early 80s seem worthwhile to me. I like the devices we have, straight out of the science fiction when AT&T's Bell System bestrode the land like a benevolent but very judgmental titan. I do wonder about two things: are new versions of the Bell System, with equally decisive checks on innovation, ahead? And what would today be like if we'd had 1930s answering machines and 1950s cellular phones?
