What if I told you that there are really stupid comments on Lemmy as well

That’s why I think the history of the U.S. phone system is so important. AT&T had to be dragged into interoperability by government regulation nearly every step of the way, but ended up needing to invent and publish the technical standards that made federation/interoperability possible, after government agencies started mandating them. The technical infeasibility of opening up a proprietary network has been overcome before, with much more complexity at the lower OSI layers, including defining new open standards regarding the physical layer of actual copper lines and switches.

I’d argue that telephones are the original federated service. There were fits and starts to getting the proprietary Bell/AT&T network to play nice with devices or lines not operated by them, but the initial system for long distance calling over the North American Numbering Plan made it possible for an AT&T customer to dial non-AT&T customers by the early 1950’s, and set the groundwork for the technical feasibility of the breakup of the AT&T/Bell monopoly.

We didn’t call it spam then, but unsolicited phone calls have always been a problem.