It’s been 40 years since the breakup of AT&T which is a lifetime. Most of the people in the industry today do not even remember how we got to this point of constantly being online and calling long distance is an afterthought. How did we get here?
Before 1982 there was not really any other choice for phone services other than AT&T. Started by the man himself Alexander Graham Bell AT&T or AT&T companies put in most of the original infrastructure that built our nationwide communication network allowing the US to grow from just a few phones to one in every household.
Because of the expense of putting in copper lines to every house and business AT&T made deals with Cities and States that they would be the exclusive provider of services over those lines. This was great when the networks were being built out but many years later allowed AT&T to do and charge whatever they wanted for their services without any competition. This resulted in high prices for services with AT&T charging whatever they wanted.
Eventually consumers got fed up with the high costs and because AT&T had almost a 100% monopoly the Federal Government came in and started regulating what AT&T could do and charge. This slowed the rising costs but did not stop AT&T inching prices up. In 1982 making a Long Distance would cost .40 per minute, everyone spoke as fast as possible back then! A 10-minute call would cost $4.00 which I am sure would be over $10 today with inflation!
In 1982 consumers were fed up and Congress decided to break up AT&T and force them to open their networks for competitors to purchase service on which is where companies like MCI and Sprint were born. Because of the new competition AT&T was forced to lower their prices and the new competitors fostered growth in technological advances which brought us the Internet and now basically free Long Distance.
The lesson is competition is almost never a bad thing and, in most cases, drives advances in technology and services for the good of the consumer!