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Perhaps, but you'd also probably be paying hundreds of dollars per month for it. Ma Bell may have been good at getting service to the masses, but it was "you'll get the phone we give you, use it *where* we put it, use it *when* we let you and pay *what* we tell you."
Sounds kind of similar to the current cellphone racket, doesn't it?
Live in a rural area- one provider if you're lucky.
Want to buy your own phone and unlock it work on your network- out of luck.
I smell something a lot like Ma Bell the only thing is that their quality sucks a lot more, there's less coverage, and the phones cost more for less consistent reliability. Competition doesn't directly lower prices unless it is true competition- something which we don't really see in telecomm. They've got you locked in every way to Sunday.
Important too to note that Bell Labs was the fountainhead for nearly all the technology that shaped the twentieth century: Ma Bell didn't just make nationwide telephone a reality, she also gave us network broadcasting, electrical recording, talking pictures, stereophonic sound, the semiconductor, the laser, the solar cell, the communications satellite, the foundations for the internet, and much of the technology that put man on the moon -- and all that over the span of a *single human lifetime.* No single human enterprise that has ever existed ever accomplished more in a shorter span of time.
Of course, Ma is in her grave now, and in her place we have companies that have given the world on-demand pornography in every home, Nigerian Prince scams, Google looking over every shoulder, texting-while-driving, dropped calls, "titanium" as another name for "pot metal," "digital audio quality" that sounds like someone talking thru eight layers of wax paper, and Indian call centers. Progress.
And no matter how people tout that so-and-so technology company is the new Bell Labs, not a single one of them is.* How many inventions did Bell Labs create- simply by allowing people to work independently on whatever they wanted for part of their jobs.
*I've known people who have worked for the technology companies and most seem to be a sweatshop. Sure- we have professional chefs on staff. Sure, we let you come in the hours you like. Sure, we encourage fun. Just be sure to come in 7 days a week and work 13 hour days- don't even leave the building- we'll bring you a meal. Oh, we'll do your laundry too. Bring in a cot so you don't even to go home at night if you're tired. Look at all the shiny nice things we do for our employees..... (cough, cough.)