[BadHumans]

Talking about the Baby Bells reforming is a bit misleading because not all of the Baby Bells reformed into AT&T and breaking them into other companies allowed other TelCos to grow so by the time these mergers happened there were other competitors in this space which is the entire point of breaking up these companies.

[DHPersonal]

The regulation that allowed for the breakup to happen in the first place was then not enforced for the years that followed, allowing for more monopolies in a variety of fields to form.

[snapplebobapple]

Also the baby bells had a physical monopoly on the last mile, which they still basically have because expensive to run multiple providers into a house for vs the monthly fees available. Wholesale got way more competitive though. Breaking up tech would not be the same because their monopoly isn't physical and would be much weaker if the parts had to operate independently.