Try Our Daily Newsletter for Free

The Overhead Wire Daily | Ma Bell is Dead, Long Live Ma Bell

AT&T has decided to sell all of their properties and equipment used to support land lines to a private equity firm for $850m. They’ll lease the properties back until they end service sometime in 2029.

I’m not really sad about the end of landlines, but it’s probably a signifier of the end of an era in communications. Those born in the 1990s or before know what it was like to talk to your friends on the phone for hours, tethered to the room, or at least the cordless base, where the infrastructure existed. Now that infrastructure is tethered to our hands and minds, going anywhere we want to be.

Wireless phones and the introduction of the iPhone and smart phones in the late 2000s completely disrupted previous lives. The way we made plans, the way we connected with people, the precision of location based business and data.

Its impacted our health and relationships with people and information. Led to affinity groups and conspiracy amplifications. With this new technology we’re getting lonelier and playing a stranger game of untethered telephone.

We broke up the Bells in 1982 because of their monopolies which led to the rise of Sprint and Verizon and other companies that are now household names. It also led to a lot of other conglomerate mergers later on in communications from cable networks to internet service and more.

Communications is forever evolving as should our cities and transportation networks. This isn’t to say there aren’t tried and true truths about geometry and supply but new isn’t always bad and it isn’t always good. It’s how we regulate and use it that counts.

***

For this intro post and more news in your inbox every morning, sign up for a two week free trial of The Overhead Wire Daily, our popular newsletter established in 2006.


Podcast

Explore More