Art Brodsky began covering telecommunications just before the AT&T breakup. He has been a reporter, editor, communications director for a Federal agency and for a non-profit group on telecom and Internet issues ever since. His freelance writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, Wired.com and other outlets. From time to time he posts to his blog, Continental Drive.

The annual Consumer Electronics Show extravaganza started off with a big announcement from AT&T: Customers of their wireless service can get around onerous caps on data usage if the company supplying, say, video, pays extra to AT&T for the privilege.

With one fell swoop, AT&T not only invalidated the whole concept of data caps as a necessary evil to control traffic, but also set the telecom policy world ablaze with an idea that would violate the concept of a neutral Internet, if such concepts applied in the wireless world. The Net Neutrality rules as they exist now, of course, grant freedom for such things in the wireless space.

As fascinating as the AT&T announcement is in isolation, it's also important to remember that this is only the latest step in something unique in American industry: a consistent, relentless Thirty Years' War that started when the old Bell System was broken up in 1984.

Ever since, those descendants of the million-employee company devoted themselves to putting the pieces of old Ma Bell back together while ridding themselves of all forms of government regulation. They accomplished the first, for the most part. Instead of one AT&T, we have the “new” AT&T (née Southwestern Bell) and Verizon (the combination of ex-Bell companies Nynex and Bell Atlantic, plus GTE), companies that are stronger than the old Bell System ever was due to the addition of their very profitable cellular businesses, of which they share 60 percent of the market. Now they are on the path to their biggest wins yet, with the so-called Sponsored Data plan as just another brick in the wall made up of proceedings and plans, big and little, subtle and more obvious. Even the Sponsored Data plan came nine years after Ed Whitacre, chairman of then-SBC (today's AT&T) started off a huge debate by declaring that companies like Google should not “use my pipes (i.e., the telephone network) for free.”

They have done it by playing the long game, or long con, if you will. They can wait out delays and defeats. Even winning one or two issues isn't enough. They then change the objective and go for more. When AT&T's 2011 takeover of T-Mobile failed and the company had to cough up $4 billion in break-up fees plus more billions' worth of spectrum, the company didn't blink. No heads rolled, no strategies were changed. They just moved on.

The first goals were modest, as these things go, and were the most difficult to attain. When the 1984 breakup occurred, the seven Bell companies said they wanted to lift the line-of-business restrictions imposed by the court-ordered settlement. They couldn't offer long-distance service, manufacture equipment, or provide what were then called “information services,” the precursor to today's Internet. Depending on the day of the week, lifting each one of those was crucial to the future of the country.

It took 12 years for the Bell companies to get their lobbying act together and for the memories of the antitrust violations to fade, but they got what they wanted, and more, in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Bell companies, with lobbyists everywhere in the country, out-muscled the long-distance industry led by AT&T and MCI. Then the Clinton Justice Department allowed the mergers, and at one swoop, not only were the Bell companies mostly put back together, but by buying the long-distance companies, they eliminated the biggest political threats against their policies. They haven't faced much opposition since.

The thing is, technology is always changing, and in the Thirty Years' War, every change is an opportunity to gain a bit more ground. Consider two quotes, which push the need for deregulation in the face of changing technology:

It's time for the FCC to stand up to the plate and act. Two years ago, my mantra was 'old wires, old rules; new wires, new rules.' Some progress has been made, but clearly not enough.

The FCC’s historic mission must be modernized to reflect the fundamental evolution in communications that IP technology and the Internet have wrought. If it doesn’t, the agency will become irrelevant.

Sound the same, don't they? The first one came from Tom Tauke, former member of Congress and former Verizon senior vice president for public policy and external affairs. He made that quote in a December 2, 2003 news release, referring back to a statement he made in 2001.

He said that quote after the FCC had already done the telephone companies a huge favor by shifting emerging services connecting people to the Internet from Title II to Title I of the Communications Act, taking away the legal requirements that allowed competition and protected consumers.

The second came from a September 10, 2013 speech from James Cicconi, AT&T's senior executive vice president, External and Legislative Affairs, giving some advice to new FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in the cause of the newest bright and shiny technology, “the IP transition,” which of course is a broadband service and thus is yet another reason for further deregulation, or “reform.”

Technology is always changing, but the principles of competition and responsibilities for consumer welfare should remain constant, whether the service is the IP transition or smoke signals. Sadly, those things tend to get lost in all the commotion.

With Wheeler already hailing the IP Transition as “the fourth network revolution,” the chances are pretty good that the FCC will take some action. What is also certain is that whatever the Commission does, it won't be enough for the big telecom companies. The Thirty-Year War will go on. We know this also because the House Commerce Committee said it would spend this year and next working on a rewrite of the telecommunications laws and has already announced its first hearing. Stay tuned for the Forty-Year War.