| > 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: Finland (originally a cooperative now owned by Norwegian state telco): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_Oyj Sweden (originally state-owned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Televerket_(Sweden) Germany (originally state-owned): link above Austria (originally state-owned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A1_Telekom_Austria_Group Italy (originally state-owned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruppo_TIM Turkey (originally state-owned): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BCrk_Telekom Looking east: Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Telegraph_and_Telephone Malaysia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telekom_Malaysia South Korea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KT_Corporation Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstra India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Sanchar_Nigam_Limited#H... Indonesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telkom_Indonesia#Early_years And a couple of others: Switzerland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swisscom South Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telkom_(South_Africa) Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telebr%C3%A1s I mean that's pretty much every major economy on the planet (with north America being the exception). |