That’s a direct result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That law will shape this century. It gave us the blessing of the internet as we know it and the curse of the media consolidation and assault on political speech that was accelerated by the elimination of restrictions on media ownership and the eventual Supreme Court decisions that gutted campaign finance rules.
Without that law, the alignment of companies like IBM and AT&T’s derivatives would have dominated big business and prevented the startup ecosystem from developing.
IBM reached its zenith the day before the Compaq PC came out. The Compaq meant the industry had left IBM behind, and IBM's attempt to catch up, the PS/2 and the PCjr, were failures. (The PCjr was a crippled PC, and the PS/2 was deliberately incompatible with all the PC hardware aftermarket.) After that, nobody was afraid of IBM anymore.
All the DECheads (like me) were sure that DEC would swoop in with the LSI-11 packaged as a PC and would wipe the floor in the PC business. Imagine our disappointment when the Rainbow PC came out, a crippled 8086 PC. That was the end of DEC's loyal customer base.
Without that law, the alignment of companies like IBM and AT&T’s derivatives would have dominated big business and prevented the startup ecosystem from developing.