By Rick
A telephone carrier is the company responsible for making the connection, both locally and internationally, between phones to complete your call. In the early days of telephones this was one company who owned all the equipment used in the call. Over the years this company grew to be a monopoly that was eventually broken up into smaller companies through deregulation. This landmark move created a very vibrant market for phone service, which gave the average consumer the ability to choose their telephone carrier and not have the limited choices of the past.
In The Beginning
Since the first phones were introduced at the turn of the century, all calls were completed and controlled by a single telephone carrier in the United States. While this did ensure a consistent quality and reliability for the calls, it artificially raised the price of these calls as well. This all changed in 1969 when AT&T was forced to release its monopolistic grip on the industry and break apart the company into a single long distance supplier, AT&T and several regional companies for local service. This not only changed the way that phone calls were priced, it allowed consumers to purchase their own equipment to use on these networks. The FCC called this common carriage and it was a major change at the time that had never been done before. It quickly paved the way for other companies to enter this emerging market and bring with them a spirit of innovation. Even though most homes were still limited to a single telephone carrier, that was all about to change.
Competition Heats Up
Once deregulation started in the telephone industry, other companies entered the market competing to be the chosen telephone carrier for consumers. The breakup of the original AT&T required that the company allow competitors to use the wiring to these homes and simply charge them a small fee for the privilege. This allowed these other companies to build a business with very little capital outlay since they were using the existing infrastructure to deliver their service. Initial these other companies offer consumers services that were very much like their original telephone carrier but at a lower cost per month. Innovation soon gave way to an expanding array of upgrade services over time that included speed-dialing, voicemail, three-way calling and other features never seen before.
The Modern Landscape
While most of these early companies concentrated on providing local calling rates for consumers, it wasn’t until slightly later that they also focused on long distance services as well. Modern services in the long distance space now allow these international calls to be made for far lower than ever before. In some cases the telephone carrier is still using the local landlines to complete part of the call and with others they are passing their traffic over the web. Regardless of how the calls are being completed, consumers have benefitted by being able to make these long distance calls cheaper and more reliably. This allows them to focus on cost and gives them the flexibility to change to a new telephone carrier if they are unhappy with the pricing and service of their current company.
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