# US phone service, better or worse?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-phone-service-better-or-worse/188254>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 13, 2003, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-phone-service-better-or-worse/188254 "2003-07-13T23:28:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Freyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/freyr/32/5763_2.png) [@Freyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freyr)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2003, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-phone-service-better-or-worse/188254/1 "2003-07-13T23:28:25Z")

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I was just listening to an old Lily Tomlin album, \*This is a Recording." and realizing how old it is. It was made at least a decade before the great Break Up of Ma Bell.

The album is full of jokes about how monolithic the phone company can be. This got me to thinking how long it’s been since the breakup and was it such a good thing after all?

Before the breakup there were never such things as “slammings” and “crammings” and phone service was, over all, pretty decent (at least from what I can remember). How is it now?

So, my question is, has the break up of Ma Bell worked? Is phone service better? Are the prices better? What’re people’s experience with the present phonce service compared to some 20 years ago?

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**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2003, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-phone-service-better-or-worse/188254/2 "2003-07-13T23:35:28Z")

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IMHO prices have come down, especially ajusted for inflation. Some service has improved but some of the fly by night companies have very poor service (MCI/Worldcom falls into thic catagory IMHO). The amount of fraud has also increased along w/ everything else.

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**Author:** ![finette6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@finette6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/finette6)\
**Post date:** [July 14, 2003, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-phone-service-better-or-worse/188254/3 "2003-07-14T00:14:01Z")

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I have no idea what the sevice was like before (I was born in '82), but I can’t imagine how it could be worse than what I get from Verizon- there is still a monopoly on local service, and that ‘service’ is abysmal. I was without any phone for nearly 3 weeks after moving less than a mile- and I had followed proper switching procedure by calling two weeks in advance, but the company didn’t find out about serious line and box issues until the day of the supposed installation… I won’t go into it, but it was a terrible experience and I really don’t have any guarantee that it won’t happen again.

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**Author:** ![Freyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/freyr/32/5763_2.png) [@Freyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freyr)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2003, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-phone-service-better-or-worse/188254/4 "2003-07-15T05:31:04Z")

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Phone service under Ma Bell (in the US) was fairly standardized and reliable. I’m not convinced that the breakup did anything to improve it, even with lower phone rates.

Sure, cellphones are nice and convenient and some long distance plans have great rates, but is this **all** because of the Break Up?