Even now, smaller telecoms are at the mercy of big (Score 1)

The smaller telecom companies were selling you T1 lines, but when they broke the big company was ultimately the one to fix it. Meaning you called company B, who eventually called company A. Company A, being the big mean one that costs more, would take it's sweet time fixing problem for company B. Meanwhile company A's customers were fixed in a jiffy. Hell, i've even seen company A break things for company B, and then drag ass when it was time to fix it. Pathetic. And sadly, we cant afford to be down, so we have to go with Company A now (deregulation is forcing us anyhow).