From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 21:24:50 -0800 (PST)
To: Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>
Subject: Re: One Big Telecoms Company
In-Reply-To: <3.0b36.32.19961115075321.006e0500@panix.com>
Message-ID: <328D4FD1.6B0D@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Duncan Frissell wrote:
> At 07:02 PM 11/14/96 -0800, Dave Del Torto wrote:
> >Um, a _better_ one, now that government monopolies are largely out of the
> >way, leaving significant infrastructure for them to use? There's this one
> >little company called MCI, see, and there's this _other_ little company
> >called BT, and...

> There are now 150 Long Distance telephone companies in the US vs 1 when I
> was a kid.
> There are now 5 or 6 broadcast and 150 cable TV networks in the US vs 3
> when I was a kid.
> There will soon be 5 cellular and PCS companies in NYC vs 0 when I was a kid.
> There are now 6000 ISPs vs 0 when I was a kid.

Progress?  Most major cities (when I was a kid) had *several* competing
newspapers, some of which would *not* be afraid to print news about
(for example) a meeting of some of the world's top movers and shakers
outside of Toronto a few months ago.

Not today!  (BTW, even La Opinion in L.A. is run by a CFR member, as is
/was the AFL-CIO).

There wasn't any television when I was a kid, and frankly, there hasn't
been a significant improvement on that.

When I was a kid, you could expect to find phones anywhere that you could
use to call long distance with.  Today, the phone you find will probably
make it very difficult to get through to a reliable (price *and* service-
wise) provider, and when you do, you can get cut off after 3 minutes like
the outside phones do in Burbank on Victory Blvd., outside the McDonald's.
And of course, you could have someone call you back on those phones way
back when, which is getting rarer by the minute today.

The Internet *does* offer some freedom that we the people haven't enjoyed
much of in the past, but let's give it some time.  As I'm sure you know,
there's been a massive media consolidation in the U.S. in the past decade
or so, and it's continuing unabated.

Consider the above comments (by Duncan?) to be wishful thinking.