By Rick
Phone company evolution finds its roots in history. Ever since the invention of the telephone in 1876, the phone company has been going through a constant evolution. Many of the changes to the way phone calls are made have enabled these systems to be more automated and less expensive over time. Modern systems are more reliable than ever and provide a simple and convenient way for people to stay in touch not matter how far apart they may be. Faced with an ever-changing landscape of competition, the phone company continues to innovate to provide value for their customers.
The early years of the telephone
The telephone was one of those rare inventions that gained a very wide adoption soon after it was invented and instantly became a commercial success. Within a year of the actual invention, there were over three thousand phones in service that could make calls to each other. The first phone company, known as the Bell Telephone Company, was formed the same year and started offering telephone service in larger cities.
The number of phones in use tripled within the next few years and shortly thereafter the telephone became almost commonplace. These first telephones were very crude devices that relied on human switching to make calls but still became more popular every year. The phone company offering these telephones soon started researching ways to make the system more automated to lower costs of these calls.
Major improvements along the way
The first major improvement to the basic telephone came in 1919 with the introduction of the rotary dial phone. This allowed the phone company to eliminate the manual connection that older models required and have the phones themselves handle the connection. This substantially lowered the cost of these calls and made the telephone even more popular. Another major innovation came in 1946 with the introduction of the first commercial mobile phone. It was gigantic by today’s standards but did allow the phone company to connect a call for a customer while traveling. In 1963 the modern touch-tone phone was produced which helped to make connection times faster for callers and also enabled the now common menu options when calling a company. This phone is the basis for all traditional phones used today and has stood the test of time with little change.
Modern competition
With the invention of the internet, companies started developing technology that would allow calls to be placed over this network and this presented some stiff competition to the traditional phone company. The cost of these calls was basically free and both local and long distance calls could be made through the same network, for the same cost.
These early development efforts eventually produced what came to be known as VOIP service, which now allows you to make calls over the web for free. All the major carries have adopted this technology in some fashion to start exploiting these lower costs. Over the past ten years there has been a huge shift in both the consumer and business segments toward utilizing this proven technology. Every year there are more improvements made to the VOIP technology to allow it to function more like a traditional phone company phone.
Features like CallerID, Voicemail and Call Forwarding are all now available though a VOIP connection, which makes it the perfect alternative to a standard phone.
Leave a Reply