Digital cash, micro-payments and cell phones (link)

Thomas Beckett thomas at tbeckett.com
Sun Apr 28 22:46:14 EDT 2002


Hey, I thought I was advocating for the devil!

But as long as we're advocating, we seem to have achieved universal 
electrical service without a national monopoly.  Rural electrification was 
achived in large part through local co-operatives such as Piedmont 
Electric, which serves parts of Carrboro and most of Orange County.  In 
fact, there are numerous small local telephone service providers, such as 
Mebtel (in Mebane), that have been there all along and are still in business.

TaB

At 09:23 PM 4/28/2002 -0400, you wrote:
> >Yeah, AT&T was an innovation powerhouse until the derned federal courts 
> broke it up.  There really hasn't been anything >significantly new in 
> telephone technology since then.  <g>
>Thomas, do you think universal service would have happened without the 
>single AT&T entity?
>Yours, advocating for the devil...
>Ed W.
>
>At 11:20 PM 4/26/02 -0400, you wrote:
>>At 06:01 PM 4/26/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>>  This proves a
>>>corollary of the law of increasing returns -- less market fragmentation 
>>>leads
>>>to faster evolution of related products and services. (Also a good 
>>>example of
>>>the positive effect that government regulation can have in the technology
>>>sector. In this case, it's esp. impressive as it required cross-border
>>>cooperation.)
>>
>>Yeah, AT&T was an innovation powerhouse until the derned federal courts 
>>broke it up.  There really hasn't been anything significantly new in 
>>telephone technology since then.  <g>
>>
>>TaB
>>
>>
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