Question

Bell Telephone, and later AT&T, was the pioneer of the telecommunications industry in the United States. They ran the first copper cable, manufactured the first telephone devices, and provided the first telephone service. With such a long history of success, it is no wonder that AT&T is still around today. Owning all of the existing telecommunications infrastructure made it impossible for competitors to enter the market. It was not financially viable for anyone to try and establish a parallel infrastructure (that is, bare the cost to bury thousands of miles of cable.) For this reason, the US government had to step in and AT&T eventually became a regulated monopoly. The company was then divested into seperate regional telephone companies.

1. Research AT&Ts history and provide the names of the regional telephone companies that it was divided into. Are those companies still in business today? Provide some examples as to whether or not the divesting of AT&T spurred growth and innovation.

2. Microsoft was another example of a "monopoly." Research why the DOJ had to once again step in. Give your opinion on whether this was a necessary move. (Hint: some of you may remember Netscape Navigator)

please help me this questions in detail.

Answer 1

On 8^th Jan 1982 after the US government made it a regulated monopoly the AT&T divested some of its operating companies that were providing local exchange service.

These operating companies were divided into seven independent local exchange service providers (Regional Bell operating companies) and were known as “Baby Bells”. Due to this now the AT&T Monopoly came to an end and the local bell companies now also started earning the revenues reducing the total revenue of the AT&T. The phone designs that were marketed by AT&T and belong to western electric became old fashioned and news designs came into the market which led to the closure of all phone manufacturing plants of Western Electric.

The revenue of AT&T now reduced to 70%. An AT&T technology was the new name of Western electric. In 1991 the AT&T closed its telegraph unit. In 1994 it purchased the cellular companies that was largest in US by the name of McCaw Cellular and started its cellular division which was new successful decision after a long closures and losses by AT&T.

All the RBOC kept its operations further kept using the Bell name and few with other new companies; some are still operative in small segments.

Microsoft Monopoly regulated by DOJ

Microsoft was found accused of using monopoly in its MS-Windows which was the operating system of Microsoft and its web browser netscape navigator and Opera which were very slow in downloading if a user is not using MS Windows. Microsoft was alleged that it is using programming interfaces which were favouring the use of IE if used by MS Windows else it will be slow in its operations if it was used by some other operating systems. Opponents said that IE is a separate product and cannot be clubbed with MS Windows and if Microsoft is doing so it is monopoly. Also Mac OS was also available at that time. Opponents also said that the IE Netscape navigator is clubbed with MS OS due to which the cost of windows OS has gone up.