<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Rick Troth <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rmt@casita.net" target="_blank">rmt@casita.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">In both cases, innovation was not stifled. On balance, I can't say
it wasn't "subdued" because I never worked for such companies. But I
witnessed cool/interesting/exciting/profitable developments by those
who did work for them. Ma Bell still managed to do signal processing
before digital methods were available. The Electric Company (sorry,
make that plural, and lose the reference to the PBS television show)
through consortia like EPRI created amazing things like high-current
transistors. </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I'm not sure how much subdued is different from stifled. Let's just say that innovation doesn't thrive in a monopoly situation, no matter whether it's regulated or not:</div>
</div><br>If it were up to T, we'd be all still be using ISDN BRI (128kbps -- plus whatever you can squeeze out of the D channel). ISDN was an improvement over POTS, so, yes, innovation wasn't dead; but surely stifled -- and divestiture opened the field for all sorts of start-ups to push the envelope; and innovation thrived.</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">On the other hand, BTL wanted to roll out DTMF for free everywhere (because it would improve utilization of switching equipment); PUCs across the nation balked because that was seen as a "premium service" not required for bare-minimum Universal Service, so the RBOCs were forced to charge for it (while in Bell Canada territory, it was free). So in that case, the regulators stifled innovation.</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">On one of my last projects at Bell Labs in the late 90s, we were struggling to get "a certain company" to adopt TCP on their equipment so that they could transition from MTP for their signaling. It was like pulling teeth…</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra">Jeff</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div></div>