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[quote user="Datafever"][quote user="futuremodal"] Wireless.  AT&T was heavily invested in land lines for the long distance revenues.  So even though prefunctory wireless technologies were technically available, there was no incentive to push such technologies, thus wireless broadband and cell phones (and subsequent innovations based on real time market research) would not be as prevalent as they are today.  Remember, it's one thing to have a neat invention sitting in the lab, it's quite another to have to adapt that invention to meet market demand. Former TRAINS columnist John Kneiling made mention many times of his observations that railroads were slow to adapt to new changes due to their heavy investments in older technologies.  There was no intra-industry competition to force such changes for each company's survival. [/quote] So your claim is that Ma Bell's monopoly in the area of landline telephony caused a lack of innovation in mobile telephony - an area in which they did not hold a monopoly.  Wireless needed advances in technology in many other areas, including advances in miniaturization.  These technological advances were not always driven by the communications industry, but became available to that industry after they had been developed to drive other industries. As wireless was a technology that Motorola was industriously pursuing back in the 1970s, one would have to believe that the wireless industry was competitive unless you feel that Motorola had a monopoly on that industry and was therefore not trying very hard to make major inroads. [/quote] Wireless needed customers. AT&T had the monopoly on households until dereg.  If you do some research, you will see that's when cell phones took off.  They got 'em after deregulation.  I suspect you know quite a few people who have dispensed with land lines altogether in favor of cell technology and wireless broadband. [quote] [quote user="futuremodal"] You mean trucking innovations that would not be around today had trucking been a monopoly? [/quote] Yes. [/quote] I honestly have no idea, but I can take some subjective guesses:  The 53' trailer, the b-train, the container chassis - does anyone really think that a trucking monopoly would have gone for the domestic container over the dry van?
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