Meanwhile, telecommunications morphed from
Ma Bell's landlines to handheld smartphones that are really computers with communication and camera features.
Ma Bell had just 8.9 million wholesale subscribers in its U.S.
"Once upon a time,
Ma Bell ran the phone system with ruthless, utterly monopolistic efficiency.
The old
Ma Bell has employed a different, more cynical strategy, by forcing U-verse customers into programming "blackouts" of their favorite local TV stations and then directing irate customers to switch to AT&T's own DirecTV.
In describing how Toronto telephone operators trounced
Ma Bell in the 1970s and 1980s, Joan M.
The average consumer pays $231 per year in set-top box rental fees; Wheeler has likened this stranglehold to the way consumers once had to rent phones from
Ma Bell. But the MVPDs are not going to let that $20 billion in annual revenue evaporate without a fight.
It is suing AT&T, alleging that
Ma Bell infringed on three patents held by Cox.
On the next day, PCCA Past President Steve Spears addressed the LDP group, recounting his fascinating journey from working his way through college for Indiana
Ma Bell to owning Bonneville Contracting & Technology Group Inc., in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico.
The carrier said it supports smart regulation." What doesn't make sense and has never made sense is to take a regulatory framework developed for
Ma Bell in the 1930s and make her great grandchildren with technologies and options undreamed of 80 years ago live under it" Jim Cicconi ATandT's SVP of external and legislative affairs wrote in a blog post.
Even as FairPoint Communications settled a long strike involving many of its line workers, the company made another move that says at least as much about the state of the telephone industry, preparing to turn part of their Manchester facility into a data center and push into a competitive business that has nothing to do with
Ma Bell.
Gordon Crovitz denounced FCC Chairman Wheeler's decision to apply outdated regulations designed to manage the erstwhile
Ma Bell telephone monopoly to today's rapidly evolving Internet.