This led to a landmark FCC decision to allow 3rd-party equipment to connect to telephone lines via a protective coupler. The Carterfone provided operator-assisted calling between ship-to-shore radios and the telephone network, and Thomas Carter sued AT&T to allow his devices access to the phone network. The echoes of Ma Bell’s behaviour during this time still resonate today: a key strategy for crushing the independent regional Bell companies in the US was to refuse to connect them to its long-distance network (compare this to the modern refusal of major Instant Messaging networks to interconnect).Ī little-known inventor challenged the monopoly in 1968 with his device, the Carterfone. Predictably, as a result there was very little innovation or diversity in the telephone handset marketplace. Established as a government-sanctioned monopoly in 1913 by the Kingsbury Commitment, AT&T held a grip on the population so strong that for most of the 20th century it was actually illegal to own a phone in the United States (and in Canada, which held similar policies) - you needed to rent yours from the phone company. Initiated by the US DoJ and the FCC in 1974, both believed (and were able to prove) that AT&T was price gouging in a number of categories to subsidize its network builds. In those days, the behaviour of the AT&T monopoly simply felt wrong. Yet, you could not look forward from the late 1960’s and early 1970’s and, as Steve Jobs said, connect the dots on the great outcomes that changes in our view toward Telecommunications would bring us.
Kittens aside, I think it need not merit substantiation that we are further ahead as a society because of the Internet, and because of the changes in regulation and innovations that brought it to being. Without these, consumers would never have been able to purchase dial-up modems from computer manufacturers, would never have connected to ISPs, and would ultimately never have shared kitten photos on Facebook.
The breakup of the Bell System, and the shifting tides in our approach to the regulation of communications in the US, was likely the single-most important precursor to the growth of the Consumer Internet.