Actually a major reason “why it was busted up” was because the federal judge overseeing the antitrust case wasn’t very competant and believed all of the pie in the sky promises made by the antitrust plaintiffs. Several years after the case was decided, the judge was quoted as saying roughly — “I don’t understand what happened! They promised me that if I gave them what they wanted, everything was going to work out.”
The quality of phone service has improved beyond belief, and costs have plummeted, especially for long distance. It cost me less to cal Bangkok than it used to cost me to call Charleston. What are these unmet promises?