They broke up Bell in the wrong way - along regional lines, leaving smaller regional monopolies, which then grew up again, and of course don't like to overlap too much and enter into a strong competition, which would only drive down prices and profits. They are more busy in trying to extract as much profit as they can from the actual infrastructure, minimizing long term investments and costs.
They should have had separated the infrastructure from the services, and open the infrastructure itself to competition by renting it. From many perspective, it doesn't make sense to double, triple, etc. a communication infrastructure but for resilience - and for that, of course, you don't need more cables on the same poles.
Just, you need people competent in the field, not lawyers only, to devise such plans to ensure both citizen benefits, and enough company profits.
PS: both John Sherman and Benjamin Harrison were Republicans. The Lincoln-founded party became very different in the past fifty years.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
