[Aloha]

I fully believe we lost more than we gained from the breakup of AT&T - local access prices went up significantly, and while long distance rates declined, it did so roughly linearly with the decreasing cost of bandwidth.

In the end we pay about as much as we ever have in aggregate - but at a loss of all of the benefits the AT&T monopoly - subsidized general science research from the labs, a plethora of union jobs, and an overall loss of US manufacturing capacity.

My belief having working in the sector, anything that looks like a utility is better off as a tightly regulated monopoly than being open to the winds of competition.

[CamperBob2]

I fully believe we lost more than we gained from the breakup of AT&T - local access prices went up significantly

Interesting. Out of curiosity, may I ask how old you are?

[Aloha]

Early 40's - about the same age as the divestiture.

[CamperBob2]

I was a teenager at the time, and what I remember, above and beyond pricing alone, was just how firm a grip Ma Bell had on our entire civil communications infrastructure. The Carterfone decision was still a relatively-recent thing with radical implications -- you mean I can plug stuff besides phones into the wall socket?! -- and it was definitely time for things to open up further.

Intra-LATA calling between neighboring towns got a bit more expensive for a while, yes, but long distance almost immediately became much cheaper. It was like the move from film photography to digital -- suddenly everybody was taking photos freely, because the marginal cost was almost gone.

Post-breakup long distance calling became something people weren't inherently reluctant to use, and that was a big deal. Especially with the concurrent rise of BBSes. There's no way I'd ever agree that we were better off with the status quo.