Surely it would require a singularly obtuse management, to say nothing of stunningly inefficient financial markets, to fail to seize this obvious opportunity to double total network value by simply combining the two. Yet historically there have been many cases of networks that resisted interconnection for a long time. For example, a century ago in the United States, the Bell System and the independent phone companies often competed in the same neighborhood, with subscribers to one being unable to call subscribers to the other. Eventually, through a combination of financial maneuvers and political pressure, such systems connected with one another, but it took two decades.