Staying Connected Meg McGinity Shannon
Happy Anniversary, CACM
Sampling the various slices of the telecommunications and
computing spectrum over the years.

When I started writing the “Staying Connected” column in 1999, the U.S. Telecommunications Act had existed for just three years. The column’s mission was to inform about the changes in the telecom arena and to serve as an acknowledgment that telecommunications and computers had irrevocably collided.

RANDALL ENOS

At that time, telecom companies were fighting over the customer and the bill, and to get their particular brand out front, they wanted to offer local service. The walls had crumbled between the distinctions of what services each provider could and would offer. The traditional long-distance companies, for instance, were trying to offer up not just long-distance voice, but all communication services, like local, wireless, Internet and even cable TV, in one bundle with one all-encompassing bill. Cable companies, which had a direct path to the consumer, attracted attention for the traditional voice companies. U.S. wireless subscribership was ascending, a strong 69 mil-

lion, but was still merely a drop in the bucket compared to today’s

233 million.

It was also during this year, in

1999, that the Internet came of age, at least according to the

International Telecommunication Union. At the beginning of 1999, the number of Internet subscribers worldwide totaled approximately

150 million, but by the end of the year that number had reached over 250 million, according to ITU data. But even with all those logging on, most in the

U.S.—97% say some reports— were gaining access via dial-up connections. America Online, which was yet to merge with Time

Warner, had brought the Internet to the general public to the tune of 18 million subscribers.

The past decade has proven the

telecom arena industrious and
resilient. The Gartner Group
reported that the telecom market’s
capitalization dropped by about
$1 trillion following the dot-com
crash in early 2000, but this
reduction brought only
slight change to list of
leading carriers. (Ten of
the top 13 carriers in
1999 were still up there
five years later, Gartner
reported.) In order to get
into other business sec-
tors and stay alive,
telecom companies
would either build
out networks or
acquire competi-
tors, feeding
into the
merger frenzy.
(Remember
when Michael
Armstrong, head
of AT&T, spent more
than $100 billion in acquisi-
tions—mainly for cable proper-
ties—to “bring this
communications revolution to
American families”?)

During these tumultuous years