Home Rule Telephony Movement

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"The telephone, several years later, provided even a more instructive cautionary tale of the danger of conglomerization. Paul Starr, in his book, The Creation of Media, documents the rise of the Home Rule telephony movement, during the first decade of the twentieth century. How many have heard of the Home Rule telephony movement, just a smattering of folks, and I think this is indicative of why it is so important to pay attention to our past.

While the remainder of the twentieth century was owned by Ma Bell, or at least much of it, the first decade saw this flourishing of independent providers, cooperatives, affiliations, coalitions, etc, much as the first decade of the twenty-first century saw the rise of ISPs.

AT&T systematically destroyed this movement, a movement that accounted for some 40% of all telephones in the United States, at its height, 40%. AT&T did this by refusing to interconnect these independents, in essence leveraging their ownership over their long distance lines, the telephony backhaul, to curtail and control edge network development and implementation." (http://ecommmedia.com/blog/2009/03/sascha-meinrath-keynote-transcript.html)

More Information

Great keynote on horizontal media movements, at http://ecommmedia.com/blog/2009/03/sascha-meinrath-keynote-transcript.html