IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/telpol/v13y1989i4p309-312.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From loading coils to microwaves : The rise and fall of Bell

Author

Listed:
  • Gillette, Dean

Abstract

AT & T's 60-year monopoly on intercity service in the USA was founded on its sole ownership of patents on the loading coil and the electronic amplifiers that made long-distance telephony possible. The monopoly lasted in spite of social, economic and political pressures for a free market only as long as there was no technical alternative to wireline systems for large capacity telecommunications. When microwave radio relay was developed, it proved to be less expensive than wireline, and AT & T did not control the patents on it. The technical foundation of the monopoly vanished and the structure crumbled.

Suggested Citation

  • Gillette, Dean, 1989. "From loading coils to microwaves : The rise and fall of Bell," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 309-312, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:telpol:v:13:y:1989:i:4:p:309-312
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0308596189900189
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:telpol:v:13:y:1989:i:4:p:309-312. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30471/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.