Telephone Market

When we were shown the picture of how the telephone companies flowed I was interested in it. Back at home I live next to an AT&T building. I have watched this building change names about three times and expand. The first name it had was Ameritech, then it was SBC, and now it is AT&T. When it changed to SBC they added a second level to the building. It never even phased me what was in there until I saw the flow chart of all the phone companies.

In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone; then in 1894 the patents expired. This lead to a huge boom in the telephone market, there were over 2000 phone companies. That was until AT&T took over again when they gained control over all long distance calls. When AT&T became the only phone company to offer long-distance services they became a monopoly. In 1982 MCI sued AT&T to be a competitor in the long-distance telephone services. (See flow chart above).

The outcome of the lawsuit was that the Federal Communications Commission sided with AT&T while the Federal Court sided with MCI. As we know now by the options of our providers and services, the monopoly that AT&T had created was broken. Today there are different providers for your telephone services and all kinds of options for them. just to think that it all started with AT&T and these companies have just branched away