The reason that was the only way cabs were available because those were the only communication technologies available.
Nah, it was would because taxi company owners are lazy morons. Well, to put a better face on it, a given one-city taxi company would have at a most a few hundred drivers and maybe ten actually back-office/real-employees. That level of small business isn't going to create a web interface to their operations in the early 2000s. Sure, third parties were offering some high priced web-based hailing service but of course that kind of thing would have to be higher priced than the already high-priced (and crappy) "interface" that calling the dispatcher for a ride involved. Why didn't taxis create their own phone/internet hailing service? The same reason Al Gore's "information superhighway" was dead in the water. That is, the average abusive monopolist - like a local taxi company - could only look at the Internet and say "sounds all-right but I'm not lowering my price for that, I'm raising them web-design costs money".
Nah, it was would because taxi company owners are lazy morons. Well, to put a better face on it, a given one-city taxi company would have at a most a few hundred drivers and maybe ten actually back-office/real-employees. That level of small business isn't going to create a web interface to their operations in the early 2000s. Sure, third parties were offering some high priced web-based hailing service but of course that kind of thing would have to be higher priced than the already high-priced (and crappy) "interface" that calling the dispatcher for a ride involved. Why didn't taxis create their own phone/internet hailing service? The same reason Al Gore's "information superhighway" was dead in the water. That is, the average abusive monopolist - like a local taxi company - could only look at the Internet and say "sounds all-right but I'm not lowering my price for that, I'm raising them web-design costs money".