From: ce11son@yahoo.ca

On Wed, 22 Apr 2015 22:11:10 +0000 (UTC), "Adam H. Kerman"
 wrote:

>Charles Ellson  wrote:
>>"Adam H. Kerman"  wrote:
>>>Stephen Sprunk  wrote:
>>>>On 22-Apr-15 09:16, John Levine wrote:
>
>>>>>>>It's just like the stupidity of our CDMA/TDMA/iDEN war while the
>>>>>>>world standardized on GSM.  Despite its flaws, GSM is far
>>>>>>>superior to all of the US-developed systems _and_ costs less due
>>>>>>>to economy of scale, which is why all US carriers are finally
>>>>>>>moving that way.
>
>>>>>>Oh, c'mon, GSM came later. And it was mostly Europe that decided to
>>>>>>use an international standards-making process because of the
>>>>>>relatively small countries; I don't recall any other part of the
>>>>>>world being involved.
>
>>>>>Quite right.  It was developed by ETSI, where E stands for European.
>
>>>>It was developed by CEPT and later transferred to ETSI.
>
>>>That would be the consortium of European post offices, not a world-wide
>>>standards-making process, so your earlier statement was wrong. Who else
>>>would have developed it? Under European socialism, the post office was
>>>put in charge of the telephone infrastructure.
>
>>In most cases long before socialism was a working (FSVO "working")
>>concept. Communications were generally kept within control of
>>government agencies from long ago, the most convenient department
>>tending to be the national Post Office which already dealt with
>>letters and later usually inherited telegraphs followed by telephones.
>>Describing the governments at the relevant times as "socialist" would
>>in most cases be a bit of a joke.
>
>Both telegraph and telephone began as utilities owned by shareholders;
>neither was begun by government.
>
This was in a European context ("Under European socialism" above).
Even if private, the operations would often be subject to a government
monopoly. In the UK, the GPO claimed a monopoly on telegraph services
and this was confirmed by statute in 1869, telephones being later
ruled to be included within telegraphs, the last non-municipal system
being taken over in 1912; none of this involved anything recognisable
as "socialism". A possibly unintended consequence was that failing
systems which would otherwise have closed down were taken over and
kept in use as part of the expanding national network.

>I'm using the term "socialism" correctly to refer to nationalization of
>public utilities, regardless of whether the governments at the time had
>other characteristics of socialism. In some cases they were dictatorships;
>in other cases, democracies often still under monarchy.

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