If AT&T Had Managed the Phone Business Like Google
I don't think people realize just how expensive and congested these networks were back in the day. Phone calls cost what they did because capacity was a real constraint. It's not that they were all ethical businessmen doing a public service as the article makes them out to be (some old business tactics of AT&T, Standard Oil, American Tobacco etc. would make the most ruthless big tech exec of today blush). They simply could not conceive of a business model where customers could use their service 24x7 because it was impossible to provide it.<p>You don't even have to go all the way back to the 70s or 80s to see this. We used to pay by the minute for dial up internet and cell phone calls well into the 00s.<p>The "all you can eat" business model — whether ad-supported or for a fixed monthly fee — is a very recent invention, and is only possible because of massive improvements to the underlying infrastructure (fiber, LTE, cheap servers).