A telephone company, also known as a telco, telephone service provider, or telecommunications operator, is a kind of communications service provider (CSP) (more precisely a telecommunications service provider or TSP) that provides telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many telephone companies were at one time government agencies or privately owned but state-regulated monopolies. The government agencies are often referred to, primarily in Europe, as PTTs (postal, telegraph and telephone services).
Telephone companies are common carriers, and in the United States are also called local exchange carriers. With the advent of mobile telephony, telephone companies now include wireless carriers, or mobile network operators.
Most telephone companies now also function as internet service providers (ISPs), and the distinction between a telephone company and an ISP may disappear completely over time, as the current trend for supplier convergence in the industry continues.
History
Phone Companies: The Independent 1957 US Independent Telephone Association - more at http://phones.quickfound.net As a small town independent telephone company changes over to a new automatic switching system, the workings of independent phone companies are explained....
In 1913, a telephone trust ended and more than 20,000 independent telephone companies were able to use the trunk lines of Bell Telephone Company.
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, "TPC, The Phone Company", is depicted as plotting to enslave humanity by replacing landlines with 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
References
- Citations
- Bibliography
- Huurdeman, Anton A. The Worldwide History Of Telecommunications, Wiley-IEEE, 2003, ISBNÂ 0-471-20505-2, ISBNÂ 978-0-471-20505-0
External links
- Village Telco - site about microtelcos
- Business Telecoms Company - site about business broadband
