> Would we have had Bell Labs without the AT&T monopoly?
The implication here is that Bell Labs was a good thing. While I find it hard to say I wouldn't have loved to have been a part of something like that, I think we may have been better off without it, considering what it squashed.
A research environment like Bell Labs freed from the behemoth of AT&T would have been a great boon to society had it stayed around in a similar form to today.
AT&T was heavily regulated (common carrier) through much of it's history and was a big part of the reason that BellLabs was so influential. Not true of SpaceX and Starlink.
Would we have had a single lab that became famous for so many things? No. Would we have got thousands of smaller labs that added up to more innovation? Maybe.
