the break up our telephone monopoly, Ma Bell (Bell Telephone) was supposed to lower costs, increase services, and the best thing since slice bread.
well, cost are lower for the provider, but not to the user-- since now the unregulated companies can pass on the cost of advertizing, and they do lots!
service better? different--partly because of Cellphones, DSL and other new ways to charge more for new services.
has the comsumer (or stockholder) benefitted? no. long distance services are slightly cheaper, but household service stinks, and cost a fortune. the baby bells have recombined (NYNEX (new york &New England) has merged, NJ/MD/DE(atlantic,) merged with Southern (carolinas and georgia, which then merge with NYNex to Verizon, which then bought a big cell company, and 40% of Ma Bell is one company again..
one of the small bells, decided to go hi tech to compete with Verizon, and made big investment in Optical Cable.. and then went bankrupt-- and many small stockholder, used to the idea that utilities were safe, suddenly found themselves holding worthless paper.. lots of telephone companies have folded.. and if your phone service is provided by one, or if your network/webserver is served by one.. or if you invested in one ...don't go looking for a dial tone!
well, the as bad as NZ Telecom is, free market telecom is worse.. and as bad as my story is.. the stories i've heard about what has happened in UK, makes everything in US seem tame.. UK is the wild wild west of telecom horror stories!
do want a telephone number? would you like another? and how about changing it again in a few months.. and then, how about changing all the area codes, and then, not liking the change, change them again! some companies had 4 telephone numbers in 2 years time..
