[709] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Let 100 Backbones Bloom
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Jay)
Thu May 16 20:33:29 1991
Date: Thu, 16 May 91 16:59:50 PDT
From: shj@ultra.com (Steve Jay)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Francis Stracke <francis%zaphod@gargoyle.uchicago.edu> writes:
> I think I read once that people used to have to have two phones, Home
> and Bell: Home was the local telco, Bell was the long-distance.
I've read that is was much worse that that. At first, multiple LOCAL
phone systems existed in many places, and they didn't necessarily
interconnect. Some houses had multiple phones for local service: if
they wanted to call George, they had to use one phone, if they wanted to
call Fred, they used a different phone. If you wanted to call someone
who was connected to a system you didn't have, tough.
That's part of how we got "regulated utilities" and the idea of "natural
monopolies".
I think it's "enlightened self-interest" for the various commercial
network providers to interconnect, so as to avoid calls for the govern-
ment to regulate them.
Steve Jay
shj@ultra.com ...ames!ultra!shj
Ultra Network Technologies / 101 Dagget Drive / San Jose, CA 95134 / USA
(408) 922-0100 x130 "Home of the 1 Gigabit/Second network"
