The fall of the Bell system
Subtitle: a study in prices and politics
By: Peter Temin with Louis Galambos.
Contributors: Galambos, Louis.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1988
Place of publication: Cambridge
Language: eng
Number of pages: 378
Subjects: American Telephone and Telegraph Company.; Telephone -- United States.
Description: This book traces and analyzes the events that resulted in the breakup of AT & T, the largest corporate reorganization in history. As the author demonstrates, AT & T's status eroded over many years. That process of erosion began when the FCC allowed competition into small corners of the telecommunications system, while professing support for the overall status of AT & T. But as the FCC should have foreseen, the structure of regulatory prices provided a generous price umbrella for the new entrants into telecommunications. Each time the FCC allowed more entry, both the entrants' expected profits and the demand for still more entry rose.