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"Mischief." In the view of Monopoly Author Joseph C. Goulden, Washington correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Ma Bell's" troubles couldn't happen to a more deserving mother. Goulden, 34, admits that his is "not an objective history" of A.T. & T. One day, after Bell made him "swelter in an airless booth for ten minutes" to place a long-distance call, he began his two-year study of Government records and material supplied by such longtime A.T. & T. foes as Louisiana's Democratic Senator Russell Long.
Goulden contends that A.T. & T.'s "economic weight is sufficient to disturb the checks and balances scales both of government and of the marketplace." As a result, he says, Bell is free to indulge in all sorts of "mischief." He cites the company's switch to all-digit dialing as an example of "mendacity and bullheadedness in customer relations." Wiretapping of all sorts, he charges, has become so widespread that "conversing on a Bell System phone is about as private as skywriting."
Because of lucrative quirks in local and toll-call zones, Goulden complains, suburbanites often find that they can make free calls over vast but useless areas, yet pay toll rates to phone frequently used downtown numbers only a few miles away.
Easy Ack-Ack. Often, Goulden is in error. Anxious to "fend off potential competition" in space, he writes, A.T. & T. in 1962 launched its Telstar satellite, "a gaudy but commercially worthless trinket" designed to dazzle Congress while legislative creation of the Communications Satellite Corp. was in progress. After Comsat's creation, says Goulden, Bell snapped up 29% of the shares supposedly reserved for the public. Bell does indeed own 29% of Comsat—but only those shares originally allotted to the company by Congress.
Such ack-ack keeps the phone lines humming, and that is A.T. & T.'s main commodity. Throughout it all, there is one thing about which both Bell and its critics agree: U.S. phone service is far and away the best in the world.