Any Lawful Device - Carterphone after 40 years [Telecom]

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***** Moderator's Note *****

Ars Technica's story, although an interesting retrospective, misses several factors that affected the decision:

  1. Ham radio operators had been connecting their radios to telephone lines for years in order to "phone patch" phone calls from GI's overseas to their loved ones at home, with at least tacit approval from Ma Bell, and it hadn't hurt the network at all.

  1. Mutual fund managers were becoming a significant economic force during the late sixties, and their perspectives and training required them to think of AT&T as only one investment out of many, not as the center of the telco universe, so they exerted a lot of pressure to limit AT&T's dominance in the field.

  2. The "CB Craze" was in full swing during 1968, with attendent enforcement problems for the FCC, and I think the commissionars were leery of allowing AT&T to continue a monopolistic practice which they knew was unenforcable.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

Please put [Telecom] at the end of your subject line, or I may never see your post! Thanks!

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harold
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