Sounds like the NBN (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on 2014-08-17 22:43 (#3Y9) Except of course that the NBN is backed by the Australian government paid for by the Australian public Re: Sounds like the NBN (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on 2014-08-17 23:03 (#3YA) Ah, well "Verizon" was once properly part of an even larger and more carefully regulated monopoly, AT&T a.k.a. Ma Bell a.k.a. The Phone Company, but was broken up into "Regional Bell Operating Companies" during one of our periodic bouts of deregulatory conservative fever dreams. They've been reassembling like Voltron ever since. (Verizon itself was not an original but rather was a rejoining of several split RBOCs; I'm still not clear how that was allowed to happen so soon after the breakup.)The US has a somewhat hilarious aversion to nationalizing the things that should by any reasonable estimation be nationalized. Look at the tooth and claw fighting against anything (remotely) resembling universal health care. But I digress.Verizon's excesses are in any case always paid for by the public, whether by local tax, federal tax, or subscriber abuses. Re: Sounds like the NBN (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on 2014-08-19 16:29 (#3ZD) Verizon has it's own history that predates AT&T. I don't mean to argue with what you say, which is accurate, but Verizon wasn't sprung from the forehead of AT&T fully-formed, so to speak. They were GTE, which dates to Hawaiian Monarchy in the 1800's. Eventually they were rolled up into the giant that was AT&T, and then later split back off.I think it's an important distinction. They are not AT&T, AT&T is still around competing with Verizon. They will never recombine, as GTE isn't the small regional company it once was. So the breakup, while not lasting at the level it once did with many small regional telephone companies, has at least created two behemoths that will always fight it out. The battlefield is also changing, as they aren't fighting over POTS maintenance anymore, but rather cellular, television, internet, and digital voice. Each of those areas has multiple large competitors, such as Sprint, DishTV, Comcast, and Vonage in that order.So I disagree with speculation about how AT&T is recombining into the monopolistic super-power it once was.
Re: Sounds like the NBN (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on 2014-08-17 23:03 (#3YA) Ah, well "Verizon" was once properly part of an even larger and more carefully regulated monopoly, AT&T a.k.a. Ma Bell a.k.a. The Phone Company, but was broken up into "Regional Bell Operating Companies" during one of our periodic bouts of deregulatory conservative fever dreams. They've been reassembling like Voltron ever since. (Verizon itself was not an original but rather was a rejoining of several split RBOCs; I'm still not clear how that was allowed to happen so soon after the breakup.)The US has a somewhat hilarious aversion to nationalizing the things that should by any reasonable estimation be nationalized. Look at the tooth and claw fighting against anything (remotely) resembling universal health care. But I digress.Verizon's excesses are in any case always paid for by the public, whether by local tax, federal tax, or subscriber abuses. Re: Sounds like the NBN (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on 2014-08-19 16:29 (#3ZD) Verizon has it's own history that predates AT&T. I don't mean to argue with what you say, which is accurate, but Verizon wasn't sprung from the forehead of AT&T fully-formed, so to speak. They were GTE, which dates to Hawaiian Monarchy in the 1800's. Eventually they were rolled up into the giant that was AT&T, and then later split back off.I think it's an important distinction. They are not AT&T, AT&T is still around competing with Verizon. They will never recombine, as GTE isn't the small regional company it once was. So the breakup, while not lasting at the level it once did with many small regional telephone companies, has at least created two behemoths that will always fight it out. The battlefield is also changing, as they aren't fighting over POTS maintenance anymore, but rather cellular, television, internet, and digital voice. Each of those areas has multiple large competitors, such as Sprint, DishTV, Comcast, and Vonage in that order.So I disagree with speculation about how AT&T is recombining into the monopolistic super-power it once was.
Re: Sounds like the NBN (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on 2014-08-19 16:29 (#3ZD) Verizon has it's own history that predates AT&T. I don't mean to argue with what you say, which is accurate, but Verizon wasn't sprung from the forehead of AT&T fully-formed, so to speak. They were GTE, which dates to Hawaiian Monarchy in the 1800's. Eventually they were rolled up into the giant that was AT&T, and then later split back off.I think it's an important distinction. They are not AT&T, AT&T is still around competing with Verizon. They will never recombine, as GTE isn't the small regional company it once was. So the breakup, while not lasting at the level it once did with many small regional telephone companies, has at least created two behemoths that will always fight it out. The battlefield is also changing, as they aren't fighting over POTS maintenance anymore, but rather cellular, television, internet, and digital voice. Each of those areas has multiple large competitors, such as Sprint, DishTV, Comcast, and Vonage in that order.So I disagree with speculation about how AT&T is recombining into the monopolistic super-power it once was.