It's hard to argue that innovation and quality of the telephone system went down under AT&T's monopoly when, during that time period, AT&T played a fundamental role in the invention of the computer and famously took measures as extreme as moving buildings while telephone operators work inside in order to avoid service disruption. It seems that other factors must have been in play as well in the eventual decline of "ma bell".
The story of AT&T's monopoly on telephone service and its subsequent breakup at the hands of both court and MCI/Sprint is a complex one that cannot be so simply used as an argument for or against the arrangement. It was a very particular situation in a very particular time, perhaps most significantly because AT&T created an entire market sector which the government had no coherent strategy to manage. So-called competition has also been quite insufficient to revolutionize the landline telephone market, it remains perhaps as consumer-hostile as it has ever been, something forgotten largely only because the cellular industry has replaced it (which, facing stiff competition but the regulatory wild west of the internet, is consumer-hostile in a whole new way).
To say AT&T should not have been broken-up due to its achievements is akin to say that Mussolini should have stayed in power because "he made the trains run on time". Yes, maybe, but at what other, hidden costs?
[1] for what it's worth, John Brooks engages right in the introduction with the conflict of a history funded by its subjects, and the book was researched and written independently
'The Criminal Wrecking of the Best Telephone System in the World' by Kraus and Duerig.
for a monopolist to offer high quality products and service is exactly part of the monopolist's playbook, not any sort of consumer benefit. The overly generous profits they earn allow them to use comparatively smaller quality enhancements as a barrier to entry for competition. The point is that "high quality service that you pay too much for" reduces the overall level of consumption. So, while the smaller market is happy with the service they receive, a larger market is receiving less service than they want because the price is artificially too high.
Monopolists absolutely do restrict supply, and economists all agree that monopolists are bad for markets.
The part where you suggest "particular situations" is essentially reflective of the other monopolist tactic of "bundling", product mixes designed to price discriminate separate market segments, again, always to the monopolists benefit.
The theory of monopoly is quite robust, and your arguments in favor of the benefits of monopoly do not hold any water whatsoever.
The system was always somewhat haphazard, for example post-WWII AT&T faced 'competition' from rural telephone cooperatives under the REA as a means of speeding up rural development. However, this was initially a bright-line geographical division of duties and REA telephone coops continued to rely on Long Lines for transit.
Of course many, many things went wrong, including the regulatory regime being a cause of AT&T's decay even prior to court action against their favor. However, it's hard to say if that would be the outcome of such a regulatory framework today (or outright nationalization), because this was the nascent stage of telecom regulation which both the government and AT&T had equal hands in "making up as they went." This was the era in which regulatory capture was more or less invented, for example, and not necessarily on purpose.
My point though is exactly that describing AT&T as "a bad monopoly" or "a good regulated private interest" are not really great arguments in that both of those things were entirely true at the same time, and the particular environment in which The Bell System formed is not one that will likely ever exist again. Newer communications utilities have broadly been shoved into the category of telephony for regulatory purposes or entirely left alone, so it's hard to foresee any future in which we will have a second "telephone era" in which a new debatably-utility emerges to be managed.
So there are some rare cases where there must be monopolies and if you must have a monopoly, it is better to have one controlled by a democratic government than a self interested clique. At least then there is some possibility of working in the public interest on price and innovation.
That ISPs must always be a monopoly seems unlikely to me. But if it's politically impossible to break them up, then nationalizing them is still far better than the current situation.
No.
Until 1982 AT&T in the United States was a legal monopoly, not a nationalized telecom.
The book, The Idea Factory about Bell Labs has most of the history including why the the defense work Bell Labs did during WWII and beyond helped them justify a nationwide monopoly on telecom.
Internet access should be regulated like it was a utility however, and that's the great failing of public policy in that area.
To give you an idea, a residential phone bill from 1982 with unlimited local calling in Seattle was around 13.50 inclusive, in 2019, that same service cost 50 dollars - inflation alone would expect the cost of that service to only be 36 dollars or so - and technological advantages should make that service cheaper, not more expensive.
AT&T was a different company, at one point before divestiture they were the single largest private employer (1973) in the US, providing union jobs with good benefits and stable (effectively) lifetime employment. Beyond this, they were also a leader in providing equal opportunity for minorities.
The money generated by AT&T was paid back in technology dividends - dividends that underpin much of the technological innovation we've seen over the last 60 years.
AT&T's disaster preparedness is a whole other topic that could be gone into as well.
My read of the parent comment is that monopoly era phone service from AT&T was cheaper when compared to phone service in other parts of the world during that era.
I can't speak to the veracity of this claim.
Nationalized companies are owned by the state. AT&T had/has private shareholders.
2) Control
With ownership comes control. The U.S. government granted AT&T a conditional monopoly. In the early 20th century it was in exchange for extending service across the nation. Mid-20th century for defense work.
Aside from these conditions the U.S. government did not exert control on AT&T's operations.
I feel like this is being pedantic. While there are shareholders, taxpayers have funded the infrastructure and are paying for it in the form of tax breaks.
Who needs nationalization? The market for transit is reasonably competitive. Local municipalities could install fiber along the roads they already maintain at a modest incremental cost, then offer the service to residents for a monthly fee to pay off the bonds without even spending any taxpayer money.
All you really need from the federal government is to have them do something about incumbent ISPs actively interfering with municipalities that want to do that.
> 4G/5G are decent options
No they're not. The nature of wireless is that it's cheaper if you have a low population density, because one tower for hundreds of people is much cheaper than installing hundreds of miles of fiber for hundreds of people.
It flips completely the other way in anything resembling a city. To get a fraction of the bandwidth available from fiber, you'd need a tower on every street corner, which isn't dramatically less expensive than installing fiber (especially when you count all the spectrum you have to pay for) and is still slower even then.
And cellular is even less attractive when you have Starlink -- then you don't even need the towers. It's great for rural areas. But it's hardly going to have enough aggregate bandwidth to let all of New York City watch Netflix in 4K.
Starlink, Cellular and ground based internet serve different points on the density /mobility curve.
That's a ground station, not towers. The "towers" are the satellites. And the number of grounds stations you need doesn't really have much to do with how much bandwidth you use, because they can use directional wireless or laser communications at higher power levels than ordinary devices, so they're not the bottleneck.
The reason to have a large number of ground stations is so that there is one within range no matter where a satellite is. But they have plans to build an inter-satellite mesh that would remove that requirement as well:
https://hackaday.com/2019/05/20/everything-we-know-about-spa...
In principle if they wanted to serve a higher density area they would need more satellites so they could each cover less area, but that's not really its purpose. Dense areas can more than justify a fiber network. What the satellites get you is world-wide coverage from one network, particularly including the places that don't have existing coverage because their density is too low.
And the combination of that doesn't leave much left for cellular to do. You have a very high bandwidth fiber connection at home, at work, backing the wifi in any kind of a hotel or coffee house, and then Starlink for when you're in a rural area or in a car and you want to look at a map but aren't near any of those. What's left for cellular?
you know how big the starlink antennas are? They don't fit in smartphones, not the directional ones.
I suppose if you're out in the middle of nowhere away from both any building with fiber and any vehicle with Starlink then cellular might be useful, both those are also the kind of places without any cell reception.
The basic rules of radio propagation should make it obvious to anyone that something like satellite (or even terrestrial) RF links will never achieve the density of fiber. And like power lines, they'll be something we run once and then occasionally fix for many decades. That may be too expensive in some parts of the country, but around here the argument rings hollow.
But you're right. It may be good enough for now. I just don't think it'll be good enough for decades.
Is that extreme the only other option we can imagine? In Texas, for example, the power transmission lines are managed by the Electric Reliability Council [1], and treated as kind of a "electricity market".
Don't most areas of the US only have one cable / internet company? I live in a major city and we have 2 choices.
It's not like the non-telecom segments were flying cars in the 50s.
Fortunately non-governmental is on the way for you. 4G/5G are decent options, many areas (rural and in major cities) have microwave based broadband, and it looks like Starlink will become a reality soon. Putting fiber lines in the ground is extremely expensive (especially in California) and frankly is not really needed by most of the population.
Are you just using a cell phone? In your situation or may make sense to buy a repeater or other dedicated hardware solutions.