Erasers, Typewriters and the "Phone Company"

I was mindlessly listening to a commercial for Comcast on the radio between talk segments last week, pointedly ignoring what they were saying, being, you know, not in the market for faster Internet speeds this week.  Comcast also does not operate in my neighborhood, which was additional incentive not to listen.

But road noises faded, and my memory ear started replaying the previous seconds' commercialese, stimulated by this statement (forgive the paraphrase): "Comcast Internet achieves more reliable speeds than Internet from the phone company."  They went on to refute claims that this "phone company" would tout its speeds as being "up to" some number of gigaflops per cubic papameter, while no, Comcast actually said such-and-such speed and actually delivered it.  Yippee.

Well, I really didn't care about the Internet speeds, not nearly as much as I had my curiosity roused about the reference to a "phone company."  I couldn't help a "Two and a Half Men" flashback -- OK, here it is for you, pardon the commercial first -- and ask the question:

Who is this "phone company" you speak of?

As those of a certain age recall, we grew up in an era with one really large, actual "phone company" called American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and a few smaller ones like GTE, and a few tiny local ones (I used the "Chapel Hill Telephone Company" for a while and dialed "access codes" to make a call).  But there was a single dominant force in electronic communications, and that was AT&T.

When you said "the phone company", you were talking about old AT&T, Big Bell, which owned the lines, the switching centers and even the actual dial phones you had in your kitchen.  You meant something when you said "phone company", sort of like "eraser" meant that thing on the end of a pencil; and you knew what a pencil was.  And a typewriter.

All that ended in 1982, when a judge settled a lawsuit by ordering the dissolution of AT&T into a number of regional companies.  These were called "regional Bell operating companies", or "RBOCs", and a bit derisively called "Baby Bells", reflecting that AT&T was also the ultimate title of the Bell system (for Alexander Graham Bell, of course).  We remember these as the midwestern "Ameritech", the southern "Bell South", the northeastern "Nynex" and so on.  They were still "phone companies", and when you said "the phone company" in the 1980s, you meant your RBOC.

But all that evolved (or devolved) as the RBOCs started offering other services, and cell phones and the Internet and cable completely changed the array of offerings from, you know, "phone service".  Then the RBOCs started buying each other and reassembling -- four of the seven original RBOCs eventually were legally reacquired by AT&T, while Bell Atlantic became "Verizon" and a huge AT&T competitor.  And there's Comcast, too, the presenter of that commercial casting aspersions on the "phone company" -- although, by the way, Comcast is now the third-largest provider of home telephone service in the USA.

If you have read to this point, thank you.

Here is my question.  Before 1982, we said "phone company" and meant a big old, all-controlling monopolistic communications giant.  A commercial using that phrase as Comcast did would be capitalizing on the public's disrespect for big old, all-controlling monopolistic companies.  It would have made perfect sense, and there certainly were derogatory references to "the phone company" then.

But this is now 33 years after the breakup!  There are lots of companies supplying phone service all over the place, including online varieties with no brick-and-mortar stores, with names like they were peeled off an eyechart.  Calling your perceived competitor "the phone company" doesn't even make sense!  Whom are they actually talking about offering those "up to" Internet speeds?  I've no idea.

How old was the guy who came up with that commercial copy?  I mean, if you're not at least 50, you have to tell me -- what image do you have in your mind when you hear a commercial knocking the "phone company"?  I use Verizon for my home phone and cell, but my best girl uses AT&T for cell, and we use DirecTV for TV service.  When I hear "phone company", I don't have a clue whom they're talking about, and I don't ever use the phrase.

And I'm 64.

I guess Comcast has figured it would just create a strawman, or bogeyman, or whatever, to make their offering sound better than that of a company that -- well, hasn't existed for 33 years.  Their ironic portrayal of a mythical "phone company", when they are the world's largest broadcaster and cable company in the world, and the third-largest home phone provider, just shows what has to be contempt for the intelligence of the consumer.

Or forgetting our inability to look up a thing or two on Wikipedia.

"Better than the phone company."  Cheesh ... we need to be better than that.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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