Telephone company
A telephone company[a] is a kind of electronic communications service provider, more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many traditional solely telephone companies now function as internet service providers (ISPs), and the distinction between a telephone company and ISP has tended to disappear completely over time, as the current trend for supplier convergence in the industry developes.[2] Additionally, with advances in technology development, other traditional separate industries such as cable television, Voice-over IP (VoIP), and satellite providers offer similar competing features as the telephone companies to both residential and businesses leading to further evolution of corporate identity have taken shape.
Due to the nature of
Over time software companies have also evolved to perform telephone services such as: Net2Phone, WhatsApp, and others.
History
In 1913, the Kingsbury Commitment allowed more than 20,000 independent telephone companies in the United States to use the long distance trunks of Bell Telephone Company.[4][5]
Popular culture
- Comedian Lily Tomlin frequently satirized the telephone industry (and the country's then-dominant Bell System in particular) with a skit playing the telephone operator Ernestine. Ernestine, who became one of Tomlin's trademark characters, was perhaps most famous for the following line: "We don't care; we don't have to. We're the phone company."
- In the satirical 1967 film The President's Analyst, The Phone Company (TPC) is depicted as plotting to enslave humanity by replacing landlines with brain-implanted mobile phones.
- In the 1988 video game Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, The Phone Company (TPC) was used by the Caponian aliens to secretly reduce the intelligence of humans.
See also
- Bell Telephone Company, forerunner of AT&T in the U.S.
- Internet telephony service provider
- Competitive local exchange carrier (in Canada and the U.S.)
- Communications service provider
- History of the telephone
- Incumbent local exchange carrier (of the Bell System)
- Individual communication services and tariffs
- List of telephone operating companies
- List of mobile network operators
- Mobile network operator
- Plain old telephone service (POTS)
- Public switched telephone network
- Telecommunications Industry Association (for the development of U.S. telecom standards)
- Regional Bell Operating Company (in the U.S.)
- Service provider
Companies portal
Telephones portal
References and notes
- Notes
- Citations
- ^ Operability: Keeping Your Telephone Number When You Change Service Provider. FCC.gov. Retrieved on 2013-09-18.
- ISBN 9780521653848.
- JSTOR 2950659.
- ^ "This day in history". News & Record. 2015-12-21.
- ^ Commission, New York (State) Public Service (1916). Abstracts of Reports of Corporations.
- Bibliography
- Huurdeman, Anton A. The Worldwide History Of Telecommunications, Wiley-IEEE, 2003, ISBN 978-0-471-20505-0
External links
- Village Telco – site about microtelcos
- Business Telecoms Company – site about business broadband