As a result of divesture, the cost of telephone service INCREASED for many people. For large business customers, savings on the phone bill were offset by the need to hire their own telecom administrators and staff. The quality of service decreased because of "finger pointing" between vendors when something broke. Then of course we've had some notoriously bad service providers, like that little company that defrauded so many people. Do you think those people who lost thousands of dollars from that bankruptcy were happy about divesture? By the way, many businesses lost money from smaller merely incompetent equipment and service providers. A free market works both ways.
So what you're saying is that the telephone system remained frozen from 1876 to 1983? That's ludicrous.
Your statement conveniently ignores the explosion in electronics that occured at the same time as divesture. Cheap electronics (microprocessors, IC chips) allowed cheap telephone service, just as it allowed cheap computers and computerized washing machines and TV sets. (What kind of TV set would $300 buy you in 1983 compared to today, and that's not even adjusting for inflation.)
MCI was into cream skimming. The Bell System was tightly regulated. It was public policy -- pushed by the government -- that service costs were averaged across a wide body of users. Thus a 100 mile toll call cost the same anywhere in the U.S. regardless of the actual costs of supporting that call. In some places of high volume such calls were cheap to handle and very profitable, in places of low volume or difficult terrain such calls were extremely expensive. MCI sought only the profitable routes, not the expensive stuff. Further, MCI did not provide any support for users that the Bell System provided.
If at the time the Bell System was allowed to actual costs for toll services, MCI would have had a very short life.
An analogy would be: You open a restaurant next door to a long established restaurant. Your customers use the old restaurant's bathrooms and parking lot, you are saved the capital expense and headache of building your own. You get to charge lower prices.
In practical terms: If you dialed 0 under the Bell System, an operator promptly answered and gave you whatever rates you needed. You had
24/7 repair service and a competent business office. MCI offered none of those things (I tried them, there was no support, not even to get rates).Carterfone was about ECONOMICS, not technology. People wanted to save money. Again, it was cream skimming:
As mentioned, here too public policy was that business customers would pay more to offset other segments. People who wanted a plain vanilla single line single phone paid an extremely low rate compared to today and there were a great many of those customers. It was a goal of both the phone company and government to encourage universal service, so they provided that basic entry at low cost.
Buying independently produced equipment -- which often wasn't as good as Western Electric gear -- was a lot cheaper since the vendor didn't have the overhead costs of the Bell System.
Note that the Bell System was required by the government to share its patents (1956 consent decree). That meant competitors got the benefits of Bell System research and expertise without the costs.
As to directory listings, I agree with others that it should be your carrier's responsibility to set them up.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Speaking as you did of Bill McGowan, he was another real winner! He and MCI came to getting MCI circuits (which of course, like everything else in those days had to be leased from AT&T) cut off when a couple of MCI checks *bounced* for lack of money. Yes, MCI had some tough times financially in the early days. AT&T bill collectors had been giving MCI the riot act; 'quit stalling; pay your bills or get sued; and we will cut you.' Period, end of discussion.McGowan authorized the financial people to *kite* (abuse the check float period) a totally worthless check to the AT&T collectors to stall them 'for a couple more days'. Very fortunatly, money got in their account to make the checks good -- barely. No stranger to acts of fraud, the earliest days of (M)icrowave (C)ommunications (I)ncorporated had begun with a fraudulent petition to the Illinois Commerce Commission anyway. The radio repair shop in Joliet, IL (from whence MCI was born) had filed a petition with ICC asking for permission to operate a private, leased line circuit from Chicago to St. Louis, MO for a 'few private customers', and after much grousing by Illinois Bell over this invasion in their territory the Commission finally approved it. Chicago St. Louis via MCI was the first ILEC anywhere. It took MCI only a day or two to redefine the term 'few private customers'. Yes, from Alex Bell and Elisha Gray and Ted Vail and forward through the ages to Bill McGowan and more: charlatans one and all! PAT]