Hacker CinemaLong Distance Warrior
Long Distance Warrior
2011 · Film · documentary · 56 min
The story of Bill McGowan, who took on the most powerful monopoly of his time - ATT, and its Bell System of local phone companies - and won against all odds.
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3 comments on Hacker News
Agreed. There's a great documentary on this called "Long Distance Warrior". It's about the MCI court case against Ma Bell/ATT.
Was on PBS a while back, but think it's uploaded as a private Youtube video somewhere.
I see obstacle #1 as raising awareness. While everyone hates their cable bill, it's not obvious that there are viable alternatives to the current structure of the industry. It also doesn't help that the current structure benefits most major TV media outlets (i.e. Viacom, Comcast/NBC, Fox and ABC/Disney).
I use this subreddit as an outlet to vent/post relevant articles: http://www.reddit.com/r/bandwidth/
There are also useful lessons to be learned from history; particularly, MCI's fight against Bell System monopoly. There's a good documentary about the breakup called Long Distance Warrior[1].
[1] http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2011/09/21/long-distance-warrior
A small telco startup, launched back in the 1960's, played a critical role in breaking up the Bell monopoly. It's a great story if you're not familiar with it. They were using a new technology that would result in affordable long-distance calls for the masses. Later, they would also create the first commercial electronic mail service.
PBS recently aired a documentary on the story called "Long Distance Warrior". It's about MCI and its founder, Bill McGowan. Here's a preview: http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2011/09/21/long-distance-warrior