Mobile operators have you by the calls

"Similarly, mobile phone carriers here in the US are the gruff, insensitive bullies of the mobile landscape. They hide behind Balkanized billing services, Huckster-style contracts and technical obscurity, all the while creating strained and contentious relationships with all who cross their path. Nobody really likes them – but most of us don’t have the energy or time to fight them. We just throw up our hands and say, “I give up. I’ll sign my life away for two years. Take my money. Just make my phone work.” Few realize that U.S. mobile phone carriers, were forged in a crucible of business brutality, and their gruff, insensitive behavior towards customers is an artifact of that historic legacy.

It all started with the telephone.

Widespread adoption of the telephony system here in the United States was fueled by the products and services of The Bell System (commonly referred to by the nickname Ma Bell). The Bell System, named for Alexander Graham Bell, was a trademark and service mark used by the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, or AT&T. Bell had a near-monopoly on the U.S. telephone market because it owned a piece of every part of the supply chain – from the networks for local and long-distance service to the patents for the telephones themselves.

Bell was like tribe of war mongering mercenaries when it came to their business practices; they took no prisoners with competition or customers. All competitors were forced to pay part of their revenues as a licensee fee to Bell Labs. With control of the phone system, Bell could also effectively prohibit customers from connecting phones not made or sold by Bell companies to the system without leasing fees. An oft-heard remark at the time was “Ma Bell has you by the calls”.

This monopolization was brutal and traumatic. There were so few people capable of any regulatory oversight of the market that it turned into a bitter and bloody competitive battle. A 1956 consent decree by the U.S. Justice Department attempted to limited AT&T/Bell’s power over the market by limiting it’s activity to “only” 85% of the United States’ national telephone network and “certain” government contracts. Before 1956, the Bell System’s reach was truly gargantuan and the struggle to break their monopolization of the market seemed futile. Even during the period from 1956 to 1984, the Bell System’s dominant reach into all forms of communications was pervasive within the United States and influential in telecommunication standardization throughout the industrialized world.

The 1984 Bell System divestiture filed by the US Department of Justice brought an end to Bell’s monopoly. The lawsuit brought to light AT&T/Ma Bell’s shady and brutal business practices. The case alleged that AT&T and The Bell System were attempting to use its near monopoly in telecommunications to establish unfair advantage in related technologies, especially the fledgling computer industry. The Bell System was dismantled, but the cultural effects of this brutal legacy have been passed down to the direct decendents of the landline phone, mobile carriers."

Source: http://90mobilesin90days.com/index/?p=9