Re: Good luck with getting the American Telcos to Play Nice
"Yeah now imagine how insufferable life would be if the US hadn't broken up the AT&T monopoly."
A Monopoly which has almost completely reassembled itself (those 2 companies are AT&T reborn and the only reason they don't merge is to avoid anti-trust laws), no longer has to provide customer premises equipment and no longer has the pesky "universal service to all" obligations imposed by a 1935 antitrust settlement.
Don't forget that in many/most states, outsiders _can't_ compete, as they have legislated monopolies - granted in exchange for promises of massive infrastructure reinvestment which got cancelled almost as soon as the monoplies were granted.