Metroliner telephone article 4096

James Robinson

I was speaking of the 1960s and 1970s.

I am not all surprised you had trouble after 1980. Things were a mess.

The clbuttic Bell System effectively ceased to exist by 1980 and was completely gone by 1983. After that point you were not dealing with the Bell System, but with various new enbreasties thrown together or broken apart as the courts deemed fit, not what was appropriate for service.

The lawsuit cast great doubt and uncertainty on the Bell System as no one knew how things would play out.

One can't make a judgement about post-divesture as if it was the same system, anymore than one can demand Amtrak provide equal service and schedule as the Twentieth Century Ltd did in 1948. The external world and laws changed too much.

No one knew what the rules were. The compebreastors could do anything they wanted and did. However, the former Bell components were tightly bound in constantly changing court orders to protect the compebreastion. It was very unclear what was AT&T and what was the Baby Bell.

Within the central offices, there was a lot of equipment that did dual purpose (local and long distance) and was arbitarily divided. If your business territory crossed a LATA line you were forced to double deal with a baby bell AND long distance carrier. MCI filed lawsuits demanding buttignment of marketshare for it and Sprint.

My employer had terrible post divesture headaches. Previously, they dealt with the local Bell company for private line and data comm needs. Then they had a whole parade of players, all pointing the finger at each other denying responsibility when things went wrong.