We could have a very long discussion of why Western Union went under.
I would appreciate hearing your thoughts.
The business press would say it was simply a matter that they had
> money going out a lot faster than it was coming in, and no prospects
> for reversing that situation. As an engineer I would say they did a
> lot of dumb things in the engineering and marketing end of the
> business. And it seems to have been government policy to keep
> W.U. with exactly one foot in the grave at all times.
The Oslin WU history is very critical of government policy -- he says WU was forced to absorb at great cost the Postal Telegraph system and constantly favored AT&T over WU.
By the late 1970s WU had recognized the classic Telegram was obsolete and their business was focused on money transfer, which is still a big business today.
I can understand needing AT&T for the "last mile" but for money transfers I would think they could've used mostly their own network. Supposedly they built microwaves and satellites in the earlier years unless that was public relations exaggeration. I heard they used AT&T for their processes and it was costly.