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Article #620189Re: Important US technology companies sold to foreigners (was: Xerox company sold)
From: hanc...
Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2018 19:38
Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2018 19:38
26 lines
2961 bytes
2961 bytes
On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 1:31:36 PM UTC-5, John Levine wrote: > >AT&T's management did not destroy Bell Labs. It was destroyed by the > >lawyers who forced the breakup of AT&T. > > AT&T could have divested Western Electric and kept the operating > companies and Bell Labs, but made the spectacularly wrong prediction > that there'd be more money in long distance than in POTS. AT&T also wrongly predicted that Western Electric would continue to be profitable. It knew at the time [Alvin Von Auw] that customer ownership of sets and wiring was no long cost-effective. However, it probably could not have predicted that W/E's business model of building equipment strong enough to withstand a nuke attack was no longer working, and consumers wanted cheap equipment, even if it meant frequent replacement. That is, consumers would rather have a cheap crappy $10 phone replaced every year than a solid durable $40 phone lasting for 40 years. Central office equipment would no longer be in service for 30-50* years, but relatively short time as new electronics made old gear obsolete. * Bell kept some old exchanges, such as panel in NYC, in service far longer than planned, with resultant poor service, partly due to the delay in developing and deploying ESS. Bell also kept step-by-step in service longer but failed to maintain it adequately, again causing service troubles.
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