The Rise of AT&T’s Monopoly
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 พ.ย. 2024
- Early Access tier note: Something about the Asianometry Patreon. I’ll be raising the price of the Early Access tier to $12 a month at the start of 2025. It’s been a while and I think it’s time.
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It always interested me how at&t was viewed by many as the innovative tech company of the time while today we view it as nothing more than a basic service
I mean, Google was once a great startup, now it is just, idk I'll google it I guess
How self-entitled of you. Just saying.
It is a humbling experience to go phone-less for an extended period of time, or into some business scenarios one normally is used to quick access of information from a phone.
Funny feeling how rapidly the invincibility crumbles & the world view narrows. Every local detail becomes so vivid.
The current AT&T is a pretender. Its one of the local "baby bells" (SBC), that merge with several other, post 1985, baby bells, and managed to buy the dying husk of AT&T, which spun off its parts, just to survive a day longer.
In the mid 1980s, AT&T divested local service, to comply with a settlement with the government. In the early 1990s, they split up, again, into 3 companies: A computer group, that quickly died, due to computers becoming a commodity. Lucent, which composed of Western Electric and Bell Labs, and AT&T for long distant service, and those new fangled cell phones. Long distance, became a thing of the past, and cell phone competition was intense. So much so, that SBC bought out it former mother company for a song.
F*** Google
Use duckduckgo
I smell "The Fall Of AT&T Monopoly" video coming soon to a TH-cam near you.
Only to be replaced by another
Governments love monopolies
It makes it easier to control the companies and their activities
My good friend Scott had an older brother John, who worked for a SF bay area phone company for most of his life. I think when he started phone traffic still went through relays, although in the late 60s things were modernizing fast. He was a technician, so when they made the turnover to all-computet switched, routed and ring signal controlled, he was in his element. At that time unlike Scott (who became a renowned electronics engineer himself), I knew little about computers, but John was a good spokesperson, and his descriptions of the multitudinous snafus that came up as the phone company adapted to software driven communication were easily absorbed . Him and Scott already had a home computer (think 1975), and it was their influence, as well as my fathers that finally got me interested in the digital world. But I lost track of them, although I'll never forget the red boxes we had (red boxes just emitted the sounds of coins falling into a pay phone, unlike blue boxes which emitted routing and other control tones). Yup, a lot could be said about those phone phreak days...
But thank you for another interesting video - for some reason your videos often bring back fond memories [believe me, if I wasn't old and in the way I'd a joined your patreon long ago]
Cheers ..... ;^=[}
You're my favorite creator these days. I'll be joining the Patreon in December.
Thanks dude!
Two words: Bell Labs, they may have been largely a service providerer but the conducted the kind of fundamental research that literally changed the world.
Holy cow! Phenomenal story
Note that Elisha Gray and Enos M. Barton , in Dec 1925, spun off the general electrical supply side of Western Electric into the still existing company Graybar.
See also, Ernestine the Telephone Operator
Last time I was this early, AT&T was called Bell Telephone.
You've never been early to anything in your life. Stop lying to people.
@dmacrolens hope you have a great day
Great telling of this complicated story, Jon. Am fortunate (and old enough!) to have known a few even older dudes who actually organized, financed, and physically built a couple of local telephone exchanges! And more than a few women who worked as operators. Worked a few years for a "Baby Bell." And now I am watching this via SpaceX Starlink on my Pixel! What a life! 😂
Yikes.
From Asianometry to Americanometry.
I am sorta a new person here but... if i am meant to read the name the way you read it... its kinda unavoidable that the west will creep in.
It’s a metrics game, my man. English speaking TH-cam channel means you need to cover topics that westerners will click on.
I think electronics are primarily a tradition of nations with access to the Pacific Ocean. This includes the UK which has some territories there. I believe the Netherlands do too.
Considering all these technological companies were pioneers in their fields in US, then it is a must
Born in Omaha in 1953 the Bell AT&T was a significant element of my life. To this day AT&T is my phone internet provider and I object to President Johnson breaking up the company. It was universally agreed that when Johnson attacked AT&T it was the best phone service in the world.
18:29 - the "pool men" 🏊😂😂😂
This is already one of my all time favorite youtube videos
There was a time when we adjusted time and consulted the weather by calling the phone company. I did call C&P Telephone.
Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone. My Mom worked for them. And I also called for time- TI 4 - 2525. Forgot the weather number.
11:52 Always love when I see a shoutout to Utica, NY
Fascinating history! Yet another wonderful video! This video should have been three parts episodes. I have worked in developing full electronic telephone switch system of South Korea on 1980's and I saw the historic monopoly lawsuit and break-up of Bell into Baby Bells, but I didn't know such fascinating early history of telephone business and AT&T and Bell's. Hat Tip to Asianometry.
5:35 "The hell it is!" ejaculated Mr.Patton 🤣
@20:44 Damn, that must've been a very scary dog.
It's nothing like coming with your mother!
Probably killed because he bad no heirs so his land was sold at auction to rivals.
As someone who worked for various AT&T entities between 1978 and 2015, this is going to be fun. what a time it was.
I was waiting for Mihajlo Pupin to show up in video... Thanks for mentioning this Serbian science juggernaut!
Man you are on fire!!!!!!! 🎉
Woodrow Wilson gets the W @ 28:05
Damn, almost 1 million subs?!
That was quick.
AT&T: "You will be assimilated!"
I worked for the Bell System, the Pacific Company in the 1960s. At that time we all knew it was a monopoly and that subscribers had no choice for telephone service. People relied on us. They trusted us to provide service that always worked. Many of us felt this was a sacred public trust, a contract, between the Company and the public. Need a doctor? Having a baby? Just wanting to chat with Aunt Betty? Pick up the phone and our commitment was that you WILL always get dial tone. I, and many others, actually cared. I miss the Bell System. Cheers.
I saw the title, and as I've been on a kick about board game history the last couple days, immediately thought it was a phone company branded version of the property trading game.
I am Irish, so I don't have any real opinion of AT&T as a company. I do know they were behemoths in the telephony industry, and also that they seemed backward in terms of digital mobile tech uptake, like 2G and 3G back in the day, the old days of analog mobile tech.
But for me - Bell Labs is were where Ken Thompson got to work on the ill-fated Multics project, and used his genius with the brilliant Dennis Ritchie to develop Unix. Unix is the baseline for all good computer operating systems. So - in my eyes, Bell Labs is just cool! I see them a bit like Xerox PARC, and the Xeros Alto - mouse-driven GUI interfaces, the "Mother of all Demos", in 1968... When for me America was indeed great! But they're also a bit like AOL, if AOL were any good at knowing how to build meaningful open standards in a new technological industry...
ATT was a highly competent land-line company. Unlike in the rest of the world, where the government PTT monopoly would take months to run a wired line, in 'Murica it only took a few weeks. Thus, _everyone_ had a land line phone, so there wasn't a real need for cell phones like there was in EMEA, Asia and "South of the Rio Grande". We also had good DSL and cable modem services. That meant consumers didn't need to push for faster cell speeds.
@ Thanks
13:38 B-lak-e 😂
The telephone has many fathers. Many sources credit the Italian inventor Antonio Meucci as the original inventor. Fore more info, take a look to the Wikipedia page on him.
the detail in this 30 mins is wow
I dig this channel. I always learn something.
Great video with so much history!
Those headlines + the comments at 20:42.. omg lmfao
Gray and Barton was eventually once again spun off from Western electric to form the corporation graybar electric. Which still operates today and distributes electrical and communications equipment.
Ah, the humble origins of Comstar. Great to see how things began.
15:26 what about the A-A-Ron transmitter?
RIP Dr. Hirech, we will miss you
Do I sense a follow-up video about the Baby Bells (including, ironically, the company that now calls itself AT&T)?
I had no idea burglar alarms were that old
This is exactly how I felt after coming with your mother!!
The Vail in this episode, is he the Vail named after Vail Mountain ski area?
26:33 is the ultra modern Bell Labs building in Holmdel, New Jersey.
It was built and opened in 1962, and further expanded to its final size in 1982. During its peak, more than four thousand people working under the same, single roof.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs_Holmdel_Complex
It was closed, sold, and then redeveloped into a multi function facility known as Bell Works.
From G Maps, there are plenty pictures in and out.
Next video, The fall of the AT&T monopoly, (MCI Telecom)
CompanyMen have a video on the re rise of AT&T.
Got me with the Tesla fake out 😂
we needed gpu operators. Yeah we have hyperscalers now. Great storytelling
Now you have to tell the story of the collapse
No, he doesn't. Do it yourself. Show everyone how much of a fuck you actually give!
Heaviside inventyed matcching, pupin patented it.
Great story. Typed from a mobile compter ✌️
Yes
Strange how America in the early 20th century hated nationalisation but allowed monopolistic companies to evolve.
The video explained why.
It's really not. It's pretty straightforward, actually.
“How Amazon filled landfills across America and other monopolies monopolizing on planned obsolescence.”
Future title I hope to see before I feed the plants me.
LOL - I guess that's what we call a bucket list.... hopefully my bod will become sod for some hungry plants, me too...
Cheers....
Your content pipeline is really dialled in, that or you’re allergic to sleep 😆
...or you're psychic and.....what new video subject am I thinking of right now!
(I don't know if a video on "right to repair" or this creeping movement towards consumers not owning anything, everyone's being forced to subscribe to everything...but that's probably not your bailiwick Jon, cheers!)
May I ask why TH-camrs often change preview cards? Changed in less than an hour this one. Just wondering.
Turns out Western Union was right. The (wired) telephone was, in fact, a fad. A hundred year fad, but a fad none the less.
Sorry, not correct. Try again.
The joke being Western Union still exists.
Competing is for losers!
You 'like' the part where Mr. Patton did what? In what way do you like it. This is your contribution? Never mind, I'm gone. You're not Lenny Bruce. Don't try to pretend to be.
And completely unrelated to this video and their history but I hate them
SS-7 is a legacy of this period's philosophy. Alas, it means "pwning" your telephone connection and data is staggeringly easy once access to that control network is accomplished. And, it is for sale for the right money.
{^_^}
🤒🤒🤒
13th!!!
Like Nvidia is doing now...
Striking themselves into joblessness. Ask former Eastern Airlines employees.
I'll consider thumbing-up the video when you cease treating your viewers like kids. Just saying.