Be careful what you ask for.
Most /.ers probably are not old enough to remember the days when all telecommunications were regulated under title II. Let's just say that costs were higher, innovation was essentially prohibited, and service was even worse than you can get from Comcast today.
"So, the next time you complain about your phone service, why don't you try using two Dixie cups with a string? We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."
I'm old enough to remember. My families phone number was two letters and 5 digits, and I was a small child when the first direct-dial long distance call was made. I had relatives that were still on party lines.
You are correct in that phone service was expensive compared to today. Long distance calls back then cost far more per hour than almost anyone's hourly pay.
However local land-line service was cheap and included in-home service for phones and wiring. Some people went for decades between outages. The primary cause was someone knocking down a pole and breaking the wires.
But today's lower costs are almost entirely due to technological advances and not to de-regularization.
When de-regularization happened, home phone rates went up as telco businesses sprang to to cherry-pick businesses to serve.
(home phone rates in the regulated days were subsidized by higher rates charged to businesses, much like electric rates are set)
However, the good thing about de-regularization was that those new telco businesses now competed on the basis of features, and business phone service competition drove innovation. After that, then home service rates went down (that is, down in inflation adjusted dollars)
But look at the things invented during the regulated phase by Bell Labs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... in the 50's, 60's 70's
That is a list of eveyrthing. transisters, lasers, MOSFET, molecular beam epitaxy, Ritchie and Kernigan worked at Bell Labs.
As for "service was even worse than you can get from Comcast today", I do not think that is correct.
My only service requests (and my parents) had been establishing new service when moving, and it was always excellent.
My experience with Comcast (and my neighbors) was shockingly bad. Bad as in refusing to take service requests, bad as in not showing up at all for service requests that had been accepted.and worst of all bad as in having service failures at all.
I have never met anyone whose experience was the opposite of mine regarding telco vs Comcast service, or even modern AT&T vs old AT&T. Service was one thing they did right in the old days..