I started exploring telecommunications’ frontiers at the tender age of nine, way back in 1964. That was the year I visited the New York World’s Fair and found myself, quite unexpectedly, drafted into a corporate public relations demonstration. Back then, nearly all . telecommunications—hardware, software and service—was concentrated in the hands of a giant monopoly—the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. AT&T’s showplace at the fair was the Bell System Pavilion. (Fig. ). The Bell System, for those too young to remember, was AT&T’s conglomeration of regional telephone operating companies. A federal court order, issued 20 years after the fair closed, forced AT&T to divest itself of the firms
