Wasn't this the original basis for their justification of being a monopoly? And that the concession to the public was their mandate to operate bell labs and give fruits of their research to industry who did not participate in the monopoly?

I know AT&T had its issues, but I've always wondered if it was a mistake to take down the monopoly. The amount of tech that came out of Bell Labs boggles the mind. And the reliability of the network at the time was, I've been told, incredible compared to today.

I suppose tech companies like Google are the modern equivalent, but they don't seem to do quite as much cool stuff.

> they are the only ones that can actually DO something real.

Do you mean to say only monopolies can do 'real' things? I agree that some have, some did them and then became monopolies. And it sure seems like most things done in the world are by non-monopolies. Just look at the IT world.