I never said only communist states could own/owned telecoms. A lot of these changes - even in the west - came to be after communism in Europe has fallen.
> The yellow pages were absolutely run by state-owned telecom operators, less than 25 years ago, all over Europe.
You then said
> Only because of the communist past
How is that not saying that it is only due to a communist past that there were state run telcos that were producing yellow pages?
Tbf I didn’t mention each and every name of the yellow pages equivalent (because time) but I think the assumption that the state owned telcos ran their respective yellow pages is fairly safe. Happy to be proven wrong though!
What I meant was that it was "all over Europe" only because a half of it was communist, not that only communist states had public telecoms and/or the entire Europe was communist. I'm very sure at least the eastern part would have been mostly private-run if it wasn't taken over by the communists.
> I'm very sure at least the eastern part would have been mostly private-run if it wasn't taken over by the communists.
What do you base that on? Pretty much every western European country had state owned telcos. As far as I am aware, prior to the 90s, private telcos seem to the exception rather than the rule across the world. It seems mainly to be a specifically north American thing to have private telcos prior to that. Looking at the countries surrounding the former soviet states going from north to south:
> The yellow pages were absolutely run by state-owned telecom operators, less than 25 years ago, all over Europe.
You then said
> Only because of the communist past
How is that not saying that it is only due to a communist past that there were state run telcos that were producing yellow pages?
Tbf I didn’t mention each and every name of the yellow pages equivalent (because time) but I think the assumption that the state owned telcos ran their respective yellow pages is fairly safe. Happy to be proven wrong though!