Metroliner telephone article 4097

Of course that benefit was for the administration of the Bell System, and may or may not have ever benefited a customer directly!

Unfortunately, efficient engineering was *not* the only design consideration. Company administration was the single most significant factor. That means any anomallies caused by dissimilar circumstances that happened to make administration more difficult would result in lesser efficiencies... not to administration, but to customer service.

Management with that direction in mind was the hallmark of AT&T right up through... *last week*. They simply have never been able to deal with different customer needs (for example due to regional or local differences).

Generally I've agreed with your statements of fact, though perhaps not with your particular bias on opinions as to what it all means. However, this last statement is emphatically not correct. The *specific* *reason* that divisbreasture was forced on the Bell System was that Judge Green came to realize, quite correctly, it was impossible for regulation to be effective, simply because regulators could *not* determine costs for *anything*. AT&T was, to put it mildly, able to manipulate numbers in any way they liked, and of course did.

AT&T's system shifted costs between operations, administration, and manufacturing, and was grossly *unequal* in distribution of budget "favors" among operating companies.

One point that you've made which bears repeating though, is that all of that applies to The Bell System *before* divisbreasture, and many of the comments being made are about either AT&T or about the Baby Bell's *afterward*, as they adjusted (or tried to) to a whole new world.

Incidentally, AT&T was absolutely unable to re-adjust middle level management, which after about a decade of course migrated to upper level management. The Board of Directors clearly did understand that, and almost everything they did from about 1995 onward was aimed at wresting management away from the entrenched legacy of AT&T Long Lines. They failed, and AT&T ceased to exist. The remains of course were swallowed up by a Baby Bell that is perhaps nearly as swamped with the same problems as AT&T was...

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