Would it have been better ? I'll prefer a company that produces massive advances like these to one that would just provide better service or lower costs for some customers at some point in time.

We had some big advances in France too, when telcos sold telephone for stratospheric prices. Now they still charge too much, but just use their cartel agreements to get more revenue. I know which one I prefer.

Full disclosure : i'm from Europe, so not a real capitalist.

>they could have provided better support (or perhaps lower prices) to their actual customers //

You can level this at any company making a profit. Are you happy with companies making profit? [If so] Well then why not companies using what would be profits on beneficial research.

I guess the problem here is that they are under no legal framework, for what they do with their profits.

ISPs these days I'd have thought would actually be classed as a utility company. Many local governments - even the police are using the Internet for information dissemination. So we are reliant upon it. For me it's a natural replacement, it sure beats wasting reems of paper.

In some ways utility companies should be under tougher regulation. I'd prefer them to be non-profits. But you have to incentivise prospective investors some way. Perhaps social enterprises could fill this space? Profits could be capped at lower levels and positive reinvestment enforced. Quite how though? I am sure money could easily be hemorrhaged through R & D departments, maybe it should go in a general state sponsored science money pot.

Was Ma Bell's support actually bad?

The current company called AT&T obviously has appalling support, but I'm not old enough to have dealt with its previous incarnation.

My grandmother had a phone that she was renting for decades. That phone cost thousands of dollars by the time my mom explained to her that she was allowed to replace it with a purchased phone. AT&T forced people to get their phones from AT&T for decades, until regulation forced them to stop that practice, and even after that they continued to bill people for those phones...often older folks who didn't understand their bills or their rights. That's not poor support, that's evil. Of course, AT&T had a state-sponsored monopoly, so it wasn't all their fault...something about state+corporate cooperation makes everybody involved behave in the worst possible way.