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#31
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better Kodak reorganization
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#33
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better Kodak reorganization
In article , says...
PeterN wrote: On 5/8/2013 10:45 PM, Jean-David Beyer wrote: On 05/08/2013 04:49 PM, J. Clarke wrote: In article 79bf218c-4aab-4dce-8f0c- , says... On May 7, 12:48 pm, Bowser wrote: Bell was not done in by "change", it was done in by lawyers. The Bell System was "done in" by the major shifts in the economic model of the telecommunications business brought about by new technologies. Lawyers are merely the people who deal with the result of such problems, not the cause. Filing a lawsuit against AT*T so that MCI could make more profits is not a "result". |
#34
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better Kodak reorganization
"J. Clarke" wrote:
In article , says... PeterN wrote: On 5/9/2013 12:48 AM, J. Clarke wrote: So you're saying that the MCI lawsuit that resulted in the breakup of AT&T into 7 different companies and forced the divestiture of Western Electric and Bell Labs was not the major factor in the decline of AT&T? See my prior post. It was not. The problem is when you put money into research and development, it adversely impacts the bottom line, for accounting purposes. Lower bottom line = lower bonuses for management. Neither of those descriptions relate to the history of AT&T. Think "Information Age". In 1940 it was a company based on the economics of message traffic. By 1960 there were predictions on when revenue from message traffic would drop below revenue from byte oriented data traffic. Corporate AT&T was frozen and unable to respond to the changes that occured as those predictions became true. Literally within months of the day the data traffic revenues rose above message traffic revenues the AT&T Board of Directors threw in the towel, disolved the company as it existed, sold off the parts, and went home. Now that is a fine piece of revisionism. It is history, and a fact. Look it up. What it also is, is relatively unknown. There are probably very few people outside of the telecom industry that were even aware of that change in revenue generation, and of course the predictions and tracking of it were and are proprietary information that was not typically divulged outside of AT&T. But if you carefully look at changes made by the Board of Directors in the 1990's, particularly with new CEO's, every single change was intended to shift executive management away from the corporate culture that saw message traffic as the source of all operating revenue (which had been the very basis of the Bell System monopoly prior to Judge Green's ruling). None of those selected from within the company were able to redirect a staid and entrenched management. So they went outside the company. And what they learned was that it just wasn't possible. -- Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/ Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) |
#35
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better Kodak reorganization
"J. Clarke" wrote:
In article , says... On 05/09/2013 01:02 PM, J. Clarke wrote: In article , says... When they were finally allowed to make computers for other purposes than just driving electronic central offices, they mismanaged that so badly that they decided to stop that and to buy an existing computer company instead. They wouldn't have had to make computers for any other purpose without the lawsuit. Sure they would. Why? Because all switching systems from the advent of the crossbar on were in fact computers. When common control, not just of the computer but of the entire signaling system for the PSTN, was implemented there was no way to operate any telecom system without computers. They used lots of computers internally, and they wanted to sell them. Which would be moving away from their core competency. That depends on which computers. First, Bell Labs most certainly had some of the finest computer research being done, going back to the beginning no matter how you want to define "beginning". But second, of "core competency" means telecommunications, as in selling switching systems to the rest of the world, then selling computers was absolutely part of their core competency. They were early pioneers in making computers even before WW-II. Do tell us about the computer that AT&T made before WWII. Everything related to "digital" that produced a digital computer, was based on Bell Labs research. Crossbar switching systems were first installed during WWII (1943), but of course the mass of R&D that that produced them was done much prior. PCM of course was fully specified back in the 1930's. .... I am saying (now; I did not say this in my post) that losing that lawsuit was a really great opportunity for the AT&T, and they wasted that opportunity completely. Only if you want them to be something other than what they were, the telephone company. They were much much more than a telephone company. They were the telephone company. That was their core competency. That was at the core of their competency, but clearly their core competency extended far beyond... .... Nonsense. They played a part, but AT&T would have fallen apart regardless. It might have taken a little longer. Perhaps it would, perhaps it wouldn't. We'll never know because it was destroyed by the lawyers. Note that AT&T is still around. The *******s that sued them aren't. That a great bit of imagination. -- Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/ Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) |
#36
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better Kodak reorganization
"J. Clarke" wrote:
In article , says... PeterN wrote: On 5/8/2013 10:45 PM, Jean-David Beyer wrote: On 05/08/2013 04:49 PM, J. Clarke wrote: In article 79bf218c-4aab-4dce-8f0c- , says... On May 7, 12:48 pm, Bowser wrote: Bell was not done in by "change", it was done in by lawyers. The Bell System was "done in" by the major shifts in the economic model of the telecommunications business brought about by new technologies. Lawyers are merely the people who deal with the result of such problems, not the cause. Filing a lawsuit against AT*T so that MCI could make more profits is not a "result". Yes it is. And one that is inevitable when regulations are in place. -- Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/ Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) |
#37
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better Kodak reorganization
On 05/10/2013 12:28 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
They bought stuff from China and wondered why Western Electric (later spun into Lucent) had trouble selling stuff. "Selling stuff" was a small part of their business. Selling stuff was the Entire business of Western Electric. They sold all the equipment the operating companies used except maybe toilet paper and Scotch Tape. Central Offices, PBXs, telephones, wire, ... After the lawsuit. Balony. They sold stuff even before they were purchased by AT&T way back in the fogs of time. That was Western Electric's only reason for existance (except for defense contracting military systems such as the M-33 fire control system, the Nike missile systems, Safeguard anti-ballistic missile system, ...). AT&T did not keep them around as a hobby. They made all the equipment used by the 22 operating companies for most of a century. Do tell us about the computer that AT&T made before WWII. http://history-computer.com/ModernCo...s/Stibitz.html They made of the first transistorized computers. About that time, in an earlier case, the Justice Department made them stop making computers, and the teams working on them were broken up, partly by mass resignations of people who went to work for independent computer manufacturers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRADIC They chose National Cash Register, not because they made great computers, but because they were cheap. After a few years of mismanaging NCR, they spun it off at half the price they paid for it because they had messed it up so bad. The Sadim touch (opposite of Midas), where everything they touched turned to $hit. I am saying (now; I did not say this in my post) that losing that lawsuit was a really great opportunity for the AT&T, and they wasted that opportunity completely. Only if you want them to be something other than what they were, the telephone company. They were much much more than a telephone company. They were the telephone company. That was their core competency. My father can lick your father. They engaged in much fundamental research only tangentially related to telephones. For example, Davisson and Germer's discovery that electrons were both waves and particles (Nobel prize in physics), Ives' discovery of retardation of atomic clocks, invention of transistor instead of just making better telephone relays, ... A couple of posts earlier you said they neglected research. You're talking out of both sides of your mouth here. That company was in business over 100 years. The deterioration, as it seemed to me at the time, started in the early 1970s, although it probably was already happening at the time of the Carterphone decision. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone For decades, they were possibly the premier technical research laboratory in the world. For decades, they were getting a patent a day. And 13 Nobel prizes. They did not get them for the Princess telephone. From about 1925 until I left at the end of 1989, the Bell Labs presidents had a pretty good idea of the importance of basic research, for example. Problems ensued when AT&T and Western Electric (joint owners of Bell Labs) got too interested in short-term development and did not understand that basic research was the future. Bell Labs' charter ensured that both basic research and product development were done. It is my impression that basic research was about 10% of what was done there, and development was around 75% or so. Then in the 1980s, some badly understood work was started on a huge scale, gobbling up resources including management attention. President of Bell Labs was a big deal until about then, but the bean counters at AT&T did not understand research (or even development, actually), and things went to hell. Think about the economy of the United States and how Bell Labs affected it. If Brattain, Bardeen, and Shockley had been told to design better relay contacts, and if they did not quit, they would have designed better relay contacts. Instead, they were interested in the physics of the solid state. What has that to do with telephones? They just invented the transistor, that's all. It is true that AT&T never made a success at manufacturing transistors, but companies like Texas Instruments, Fairchild, RCA, Philco, and a few others made a success of it. Changed the economy of the whole world. Now there is a computer in my cell phone, several computers in my car, ... . That cell phone has more compute power than the IBM 704 I first used in the late 1950s that cost $680/ an hour to rent and required two trained operators per shift to run it. |
#38
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better Kodak reorganization
Jean-David Beyer wrote:
On 05/10/2013 12:28 AM, J. Clarke wrote: They bought stuff from China and wondered why Western Electric (later spun into Lucent) had trouble selling stuff. "Selling stuff" was a small part of their business. Selling stuff was the Entire business of Western Electric. They sold all the equipment the operating companies used except maybe toilet paper and Scotch Tape. Central Offices, PBXs, telephones, wire, ... After the lawsuit. Balony. They sold stuff even before they were purchased by AT&T way back in the fogs of time. That was Western Electric's only reason for existance (except for defense contracting military systems such as the M-33 fire control system, the Nike missile systems, Safeguard anti-ballistic missile system, ...). AT&T did not keep them around as a hobby. They made all the equipment used by the 22 operating companies for most of a century. But "selling stuff" actually was not the purpose of WECO. It was the *manufacturing* arm of the Bell System. Their purpose was to provide equipment to the Bell System. They were not pricing equipment for sale, to make a profit, nor for sale to just anyone. Indeed the relationship between WECO and various Bell operating companies was more political than one of a company selling goods to a customer. WECO provided BOC's what ATT corporate allowed, not what they wanted or what they were willing to buy. The "favored" BOC's were at the top of the list for new technology, and others languished in the backwaters of corporate politics. The cost of equipment to a BOC was not based on cost of manufacture, cost of acquisition, nor on profit and loss for WECO. It was based on what Corporate wanted the books to show the regulators. And that is precisely the reason that the DOJ was able to convince Judge Green that it was impossible to regulate the Bell System as a monopoly. The manipulation was legal and it was extreme and it was effective. It didn't make anything efficient though, except the administration of the Bell System as a regulated monopoly! From about 1925 until I left at the end of 1989, the Bell Labs presidents had a pretty good idea of the importance of basic research, for example. Problems ensued when AT&T and Western Electric (joint owners of Bell Labs) got too interested in short-term development and did not understand that basic research was the future. Bell Labs' charter ensured that both basic research and product development were done. It is my impression that basic research was about 10% of what was done there, and development was around 75% or so. Then in the 1980s, some badly understood work was started on a huge scale, gobbling up resources including management attention. President of Bell Labs was a big deal until about then, but the bean counters at AT&T did not understand research (or even development, actually), and things went to hell. Incidentally, that fits my understanding of the time frame too. I would not suggest that it started before 1984, but certainly the changes with divestiture were very important. Think about the economy of the United States and how Bell Labs affected it. If Brattain, Bardeen, and Shockley had been told to design better relay contacts, and if they did not quit, they would have designed better relay contacts. Instead, they were interested in the physics of the solid state. What has that to do with telephones? They just invented the transistor, that's all. It is true that AT&T never made a success at manufacturing transistors, but companies like Texas Instruments, Fairchild, RCA, Philco, and a few others made a success of it. Changed the economy of the whole world. Now there is a computer in my cell phone, several computers in my car, ... . That cell phone has more compute power than the IBM 704 I first used in the late 1950s that cost $680/ an hour to rent and required two trained operators per shift to run it. Goes to the core of just what their core capabilities were! -- Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/ Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) |
#39
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better Kodak reorganization
In article , says...
"J. Clarke" wrote: In article , says... PeterN wrote: On 5/9/2013 12:48 AM, J. Clarke wrote: So you're saying that the MCI lawsuit that resulted in the breakup of AT&T into 7 different companies and forced the divestiture of Western Electric and Bell Labs was not the major factor in the decline of AT&T? See my prior post. It was not. The problem is when you put money into research and development, it adversely impacts the bottom line, for accounting purposes. Lower bottom line = lower bonuses for management. Neither of those descriptions relate to the history of AT&T. Think "Information Age". In 1940 it was a company based on the economics of message traffic. By 1960 there were predictions on when revenue from message traffic would drop below revenue from byte oriented data traffic. Corporate AT&T was frozen and unable to respond to the changes that occured as those predictions became true. Literally within months of the day the data traffic revenues rose above message traffic revenues the AT&T Board of Directors threw in the towel, disolved the company as it existed, sold off the parts, and went home. Now that is a fine piece of revisionism. It is history, and a fact. Look it up. What it also is, is relatively unknown. There are probably very few people outside of the telecom industry that were even aware of that change in revenue generation, and of course the predictions and tracking of it were and are proprietary information that was not typically divulged outside of AT&T. But if you carefully look at changes made by the Board of Directors in the 1990's, particularly with new CEO's, every single change was intended to shift executive management away from the corporate culture that saw message traffic as the source of all operating revenue (which had been the very basis of the Bell System monopoly prior to Judge Green's ruling). None of those selected from within the company were able to redirect a staid and entrenched management. So they went outside the company. And what they learned was that it just wasn't possible. So you're saying that somehow MCI just conveniently filed suit and the Justice Department conveniently ruled on exactly the scheduled that AT&T wanted? |
#40
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better Kodak reorganization
In article , says...
"J. Clarke" wrote: In article , says... On 05/09/2013 01:02 PM, J. Clarke wrote: In article , says... When they were finally allowed to make computers for other purposes than just driving electronic central offices, they mismanaged that so badly that they decided to stop that and to buy an existing computer company instead. They wouldn't have had to make computers for any other purpose without the lawsuit. Sure they would. Why? Because all switching systems from the advent of the crossbar on were in fact computers. For a very loose definition of "computer". When common control, not just of the computer but of the entire signaling system for the PSTN, was implemented there was no way to operate any telecom system without computers. And yet somehow it was managed. They used lots of computers internally, and they wanted to sell them. Which would be moving away from their core competency. That depends on which computers. First, Bell Labs most certainly had some of the finest computer research being done, going back to the beginning no matter how you want to define "beginning". But second, of "core competency" means telecommunications, as in selling switching systems to the rest of the world, then selling computers was absolutely part of their core competency. AT&T's main line of business was not "selling switching system to the rest of the world". They were a service company with hardware secondary. Their core competency was delivering telephone service cheaply and reliably. They were early pioneers in making computers even before WW-II. Do tell us about the computer that AT&T made before WWII. Everything related to "digital" that produced a digital computer, was based on Bell Labs research. Crossbar switching systems were first installed during WWII (1943), but of course the mass of R&D that that produced them was done much prior. PCM of course was fully specified back in the 1930's. You have not demonstrated the existence of a computer made by AT&T prior to WWII. That was your assertion, not that research into digital signalling was conducted. Perhaps you don't understand that the word "computer" is not a generic catch-all for digital technology--a 7401 quad nand gate is a digital device, but it is a long way from being a computer. ... I am saying (now; I did not say this in my post) that losing that lawsuit was a really great opportunity for the AT&T, and they wasted that opportunity completely. Only if you want them to be something other than what they were, the telephone company. They were much much more than a telephone company. They were the telephone company. That was their core competency. That was at the core of their competency, but clearly their core competency extended far beyond... You aren't by any chance a former president who didn't have sex with that woman are you? ... Nonsense. They played a part, but AT&T would have fallen apart regardless. It might have taken a little longer. Perhaps it would, perhaps it wouldn't. We'll never know because it was destroyed by the lawyers. Note that AT&T is still around. The *******s that sued them aren't. That a great bit of imagination. In what universe? |
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