40 Years After Carterphone Ended AT&T Equipment Monopoly 132
fm6 writes "Wednesday was the 40th anniversary of the Carterfone Decision which brought to an end AT&T's monopoly on telephone terminal equipment. Ars Technica has an opinionated but informative backgrounder on this landmark, which pretty much created the telecommunications world as we currently know it."
Here's a toast to... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Everyone should have an old touch tone phone (Score:3, Interesting)
That's where I put all the UPS's that people give me that don't work anymore, after I go to rat shack and drop $20 on a new battery for them.
Most of the equipment in my house has a UPS. My phone, my answering machine, my stereo (keeps the channel presets), my WAP in the attic, etc. Gave one to my neighbor recently, her main phone is a cordless and wasn't working during a recent blackout.
Re:we're the phone company (Score:3, Interesting)
Why should they waste energy and money running lines out to where people aren't?
If you want to be out in the sticks, away from where people are (or you want something else that depends upon that fact), deal with the consequences of not being in a dense enough population to warrant higher-level service-- the same way people who want to be more closely connected live with the downsides of being in more urban areas. While I can get behind rolling basic services out to everyone (power, phone, dialup), once you have "access", anything past that is something you have to figure out or deal without.
Phone cops (Score:5, Interesting)
But the YouTube link [youtube.com] I found on Google says "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation". So now we have Video Cops instead of Phone Cops.
We can't even talk about monopolies of the past due to monopolies of the present.
Re:we're the phone company (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
If they get to selectively choose who they serve, let them negotiate land rights across all the private property, everywhere they go.
1968, eh? (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.tvacres.com/comm_ernestine.htm [tvacres.com]
Re:how carter won (Score:5, Interesting)
The Carterphone case was covered in my college telecommunications course. Dr. Baker made two points not mentioned in Slashdot. First, Tom Carter knew he did not have the resources to fight Ma Bell (AT&T for the nickname challenged). He asked the oil drilling industry for help, and received all he needed. The Carterphone was critical to the drilling business. Second, Dr. Baker stated that AT&T had a history of fighting the wrong lawsuits for the wrong reasons. Had they simply allowed acoustic coupling with no electronic attachment, the Carterphone would have satisfied customer needs, and the attached equipment monopoly would still exist. AT&T fought it, lost heavily, made unwelcome enemies, and left themselves open to the later lawsuit which destroyed their communications monopoly.
Re:Everyone should have an old touch tone phone (Score:3, Interesting)
> Why don't batteries work for VOIP from the cable company?
Because cable companies, unlike phone companies, aren't required to have backup power to run THEMSELVES. Or, as Comcast's reps eloquently put it after Hurricane Wilma, "Our crews follow FPL's." No power == no cable == no cable internet. Hurricane Wilma left my old neighborhood's power lines relatively unscathed, but destroyed our power substation, so we had no power for more than two weeks (Coral Gables... central Dade County). I never lost DSL local loop, but Comcast didn't get service restored to the area until the day after FPL did, and didn't get it restored to pre-hurricane problem-free levels for another week. Anyone with cable internet in the area was SOL unless they had a tetherable PDA phone.
Sadly, when I moved recently, I was assured by AT&T/BellSouth that DSL is available in my neighborhood... then told that I can't actually GET DSL right now because their DSLAM ports are maxed out (it's a remote DSLAM), and the bastards are too cheap to add more. To say I was pissed would be an understatement... I actually had DSL availability as an explicit contingency on my purchase offer, and was delighted to have it officially satisfied the next day by BellSouth's assurances that DSL exists in my neighborhood (never bothering to mention that "Exists" != "Available to new customers"). So for now, at least, I'm a captive Comcast customer :(
Re:Everyone should have an old touch tone phone (Score:5, Interesting)
I had heard that plenty of cell towers were still active during Katrina for 48+ hours afterwards. I dunno what percentage of cell towers have battery backed up UPS power supplies, but to my knowledge they are pretty common now. I've personally seen a couple of towers here locally, and they all had battery back up for at least 24 hours and one tower had a hook up to a generator.
Personally, if I ever had a large-scale emergency I would just run down to my data center. It has a very well equipped security force, unlimited diesel fuel contract providing emergency power, redundant internet, redundant air condition, and UPS redundant power circuits to every cage. I'm pretty sure that I would be able to communicate from there. If I couldn't do that, I would think that the emergency might be REALLY big.
Re:we're the phone company (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree 1000 percent with you.
I am also a subscriber to a wireless broadband company, mostly catering to the Hotel / Hospitality market. They found out that they could make MORE money by providing wifi broadband (802.11 based) to outlying areas in So Calif.
50.00 a month gets me half megabit bidirectional (another 9.99 a month gets me another few hundredK, QOS'ed for Vonage or my VoIP of choice, an external and internal IP (one for VoIP, one NAT), etc.)). I can pay up to 150 a month to get much faster, but a properly positioned Squid box negates the need for that, and fetchmail keeps me happy on the single POP acct. I have left.
It's expensive, it's ideal (I haven't lost signal yet, but I HAVE had latency issues when we had 3 feet of snow in 12 hours.... It still worked, just had a few timeouts). Judicious use of access points and parabolics mandated on each installation means we continue to get service. Our ToS is shittily written (as a consumer, instead of a business acct), but honestly, I haven't had much of an issue.
I back that up with wireless from my cell phone.
I pay much more than I do at my house in Silicon Valley. I pay 19 dollars a month for 1.5 meg DSL, and we all know the drill there.
But, for an always on connection, people in the "sticks" should look to Hotels and their ISP's. It helped me out.
http://www.creative-wireless.net/ [creative-wireless.net] is the name of the company that I pay my bill to, but they are NOT the underlying technology. However, at a place that has various peaks and valleys from slightly BELOW sea level to > 7K feet (My house is at 6400 feet ASL), it works GREAT. (I dropped WildBlue satellite when I found these guys).
--Toll_Free
Re:Everyone should have an old touch tone phone (Score:2, Interesting)
I use Vonage and a UPS to power my Vonage adapter, my WiFi adapter (I get WiFi based Inet), and my WiFi router in the house.
It will last nearly 12 hours... I "pulled the plug" in a blackout test one day... It pulled slightly more than 11 hours.
It, too, was one of those UPS's that was a 'gimme' from a friend.
--Toll_Free