I think the post you're responding to is thinking of the unleashing of non-Bell-owned equipment on AT&T lines. This was prohibited by AT&T until the FCC forced them to drop this provision. Commonly known as the Carterphone decision, this happened in 1968. Fax machines, modems, answering machines and other devices were mostly only possible after this change.
Correct, that is what they are referring to. However, they are directly linking it to the 1984 breakup, which was not what allowed it. Thanks for the name of the decision [1], I had a hard time finding a reference. :)
So, yes, it's an argument for regulation, but not for breaking up a monopoly. :)
There are many good reasons to break up monopolies, but their thesis is that the 1984 breakup led to the development of ISPs because people were all of a sudden allowed to plug random things into the network.
case by case, maybe one is not directly linked to the other.
however in the mindset of ATT and telco management, all these things are linked. It's like when Microsoft supported Apple or soft pedalled some of it's legal case against linux in the late 90s and early 2000s - it wasn't directly linked to the government suing them for bundling a web browser circa late 90s, but in the management of Microsoft, they had to gauge their decisions against whether the government might object to their behavior, essentially whether their "brand" with the government regulators would be damaged if they, say, systematically obliterated linux the way they did Dr Dos in the late 80s/early 90s.
