A hundred years ago, 15 million telephones were in use in the United States—but that number would more than double by the end of the decade. Almost

If AT&T Had Managed the Phone Business like Google

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2021-09-09 16:30:04

A hundred years ago, 15 million telephones were in use in the United States—but that number would more than double by the end of the decade. Almost the entire network fell under the control of a single corporation, the American Telegraph and Telephone Company (or AT&T), which was somehow allowed to maintain its monopoly until the Department of Justice forced a breakup of the business in the 1980s.

But for most of its history, AT&T had almost total control of telecommunications in the US. As far back as 1907, the president of the company had made his strategy clear when he announced the motto of “one policy, one system, universal service.” The company’s dominance was so extreme, that even the phones in people’s homes were owned by AT&T, and merely leased or lent to users. On some phones you could even see the words molded into the equipment: “BELL SYSTEM PROPERTY—NOT FOR SALE.”

The folks at AT&T thought they were smart. But Silicon Valley folks would laugh at their naïve approach. Today’s tech titans would manage a monopoly of that scale very differently.