I remember the story about the old lady. She was renting after you could own your own phone. Bell gave us the option to buy their phone that we had been using or rent it or buy from outside.
When only Bell phones were allowed, we didn’t pay rent. That’s why they were practically unbreakable.

I’m not convinced renting phones was a great deal–I remember the story a couple of years ago where an elderly woman was paying $29 a month to rent her old Bell phone. That’s $348 a year, which buys a lot of throwaways.

I’d rather have the option of paying more than $10 to own something designed not to break. The market doesn’t seem to support that idea anymore, but maybe that will change if the current DEPRESSION lasts long enough.

But there seem to be enough old Western Electric 500s to go around for those who want the old quality. Otherwise they’d be selling for upwards of $100, and if I were willing to pay $30-$50 for them, I could probably buy one for every jack in the house next weekend.

I’ve heard arguments on both sides of the AT&T breakup. From what I understand, by the time AT&T broke up in 1984, it was less evil than it had been at its peak. What I don’t understand is why it made sense to break the company up only to let it reconstruct itself. I always thought competition was supposed to be a good thing, but I guess maybe that means I’m not a good Republican anymore.

“An amazing invention – but who would ever want to use one?”.
made a call from Washington to Pennsylvania with Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, patented on 7 March 1876
Rutherford B. Hayes