Just goes to show there is another side of the story besides the AT&T version.
I've never found a company yet that didn't believe that free market competition was good for everyone else, but that their market was unique and they should be protected from competitors.
The irony here is that at the time of the Kingsbury Commitment, phone networks were spreading across the country like wildfire. AT&T had already built its long distance network - it obviously didn't require a monopoly guarantee in order to do so.
From the article, there were 3,000 phone companies. Surely with that number plenty would do very well in places other than major cities where there weren't 2,999 competitors. Just as obviously, with so many competitors there were not high cost barriers to entry.
The irony here is that at the time of the Kingsbury Commitment, phone networks were spreading across the country like wildfire.
That's not good enough, though. The phone system was something that needed to be everywhere, including areas where poverty and/or population density could never have justified a business case.
Were those 3,000 phone companies all building compatible equipment? I don't know, but I'm guessing not. This would have been a problem when it came time to tie them into a single long distance network.
Perhaps some compromise could have been reached in which they would all agree to deploy compatible equipment... but is there really an economic advantage in having 3,000 regional monopolies all doing exactly the same thing, as opposed to one mega-monopoly? Either way the individual customer is going to have to deal with a monopoly.
I've never found a company yet that didn't believe that free market competition was good for everyone else, but that their market was unique and they should be protected from competitors.
The irony here is that at the time of the Kingsbury Commitment, phone networks were spreading across the country like wildfire. AT&T had already built its long distance network - it obviously didn't require a monopoly guarantee in order to do so.
From the article, there were 3,000 phone companies. Surely with that number plenty would do very well in places other than major cities where there weren't 2,999 competitors. Just as obviously, with so many competitors there were not high cost barriers to entry.