ABSTRACT
W hat virtually no one is arguing is that the US has now achieved a high avail ability of communications services at rates that are among the cheapest in the world. The carriers are not hurting either, just look at where AT&T stock had risen to before the big telecom stock crash. AT&T went from 17+ in 1984 to over 60 in the late 1990s. Even with the depression in the stock in the 2000s, it was still in the neighborhood of 60, considering the various spinoffs — Lucent, Wireless, etc. There are those who still try to argue that all this could have happened anyway, at less cost and less pain. There are also those that argue that the South really won the Civil War!
