On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 12:08 AM, GtwoG PublicOhOne <g2g-public01(a)att.net>wrote;wrote:
Originally, carriers were legally forbidden to have
any financial interest
in "content." Thus the telephone company could not give you a better or
worse connection depending on whether they did or didn't like you or the
words you said in conversations.
As a (humorus?) aside, legend has it that the original automatic telephone
switch was invented just to combat this sort of financial conflict of
interest.
According to some accounts, Almon Strowger, an
undertaker<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funeral_director>or>,
was motivated to invent an automatic telephone exchange after having
difficulties with the local telephone
operators<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switchboard_operator>or>,
one of whom was the wife of a competitor. He was said to be convinced that
she, as one of the manual telephone
exchange<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_exchange#Manual_service…
operators
was sending calls "to the undertaker" to her husband.[*citation needed
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed>*]
Have fun,
--
-steve