Customer Reviews

Who Broke Up AT&T?: From Ma Bell to the Internet

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Mr. Besing's book is a great guide to telecommunications in the U.S. for laymen. It is a history of the Bell telephone monopoly and how that monopoly was broken up by the author and other attorneys representing small companies who simply wanted to compete with the AT&T and the Bell Telephone System. Most of us do not know or understand what happened to convert an enormous industry from a pervasive monopoly to real competition. As the attorney for two of the little guys who took on AT&T, then the largest company on Earth, the author gives a blow-by-blow account of the long struggle over a 20-year period in the U.S. to bring lower prices and technological innovation to the industry which affects everyone, everyday. It is truly amazing that these "little people" were able, against overwhelming odds, to transform our communications world, from telephones to the Internet to I-phones. Without this book the public could never know how dominant and self-serving the Bell System was for almost a century or how difficult it was to change the industry by using fundamental laws which Congress and the Administration should have employed to break the unlawful monopoly. A truly moving story all of us should know.

This book is poorly written, terribly long, and woefully boring and written by an "author" for lack of a better word whose arrogance shines through the each and every word. Don't read it.