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Telephone Companies
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 (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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bell Edison Telephone Building
A bell is a directly struck idiophone percussion instrument. Most bells have the shape of a hollow cup that when struck vibrates in a single strong strike tone, with its sides forming an efficient resonator. The strike may be made by an internal "clapper" or "uvula", an external hammer, or—in small bells—by a small loose sphere enclosed within the body of the bell (jingle bell). Bells are usually cast from bell metal (a type of bronze) for its resonant properties, but can also be made from other hard materials. This depends on the function. Some small bells such as ornamental bells or cowbells can be made from cast or pressed metal, glass or ceramic, but large bells such as a church, clock and tower bells are normally cast from bell metal. Bells intended to be heard over a wide area can range from a single bell hung in a turret or bell-gable, to a musical ensemble such as an English ring of bells, a carillon or a Russian zvon which are tuned to a common scale and inst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kingsbury Commitment
The Kingsbury Commitment is a 1913 out-of-court settlement of the United States government's antitrust challenge against the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) for AT&T's then-growing vertical monopoly in the telephone industry. In return for the government's agreement not to pursue its case against the company as a monopolist, AT&T agreed to divest the controlling interest it had acquired in the Western Union telegraph company, and to allow non-competing independent telephone companies to interconnect with the AT&T long-distance network. History In 1907, Theodore N. Vail became president of AT&T for the second time. Immediately, he steered the company into a new direction, in terms of vision, company organization, and technology. He envisioned telephone service as a public utility, and the future of the American telephone industry as a unified system of companies under the lead of his company. This required technical standards understood and accepted by all players in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Competitive Local Exchange Carrier
A competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), in the United States and Canada, is a telecommunications provider company (sometimes called a " carrier") competing with other, already established carriers, generally the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC). Background Local exchange carriers (LECs) are divided into incumbent (ILECs) and competitive (CLECs). The ILECs are usually the original, monopoly LEC in a given area, and receive different regulatory treatment from the newer CLECs. A data local exchange carrier (DLEC) is a CLEC specializing in DSL services by leasing lines from the ILEC and reselling them to Internet service providers (ISPs). History CLECs evolved from the competitive access providers (CAPs) that began to offer private line and special access services in competition with the ILECs beginning in 1985. The CAPs (such as Teleport Communications Group (TCG) and Metropolitan Fiber Systems (MFS)) deployed fiber optic systems in the central business districts of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internet Telephony Service Provider
An Internet telephony service provider (ITSP) offers digital telecommunications services based on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) that are provisioned via the Internet. ITSPs provide services to end-users directly or as whole-sale suppliers to other ITSPs. ITSPs use a variety of signaling and multimedia protocols, including the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP), Megaco, and the H.323 protocol. H.323 is one of the earliest VoIP protocols, but its use is declining and it is rarely used for consumer products. Retail customers of an ITSP may use traditional analog telephone sets attached to an analog telephony adapter (ATA) to connect to the service provider's network via a local area network, they may use an IP phone, or they may connect a private branch exchange (PBX) system to the service via media gateways. ITSPs are also known as voice service providers (VSP). History In the United States, net2Phone began offering consumer VoIP ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zak McKracken And The Alien Mindbenders
''Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders'' is a 1988 graphic adventure game by Lucasfilm Games. It was the second game to use the SCUMM engine, after ''Maniac Mansion''. The project was led by David Fox, with Matthew Alan Kane as the co-designer and co-programmer. Like ''Maniac Mansion'', it was developed for the Commodore 64 and later released in 1988 for that system and DOS. Plot The story is set in 1997, nine years after the game's production. The plot follows Zak, a writer for the ''National Inquisitor'', a tabloid newspaper; Annie Larris, a freelance scientist; and Melissa China and Leslie Bennett, two Yale University coed students, in their attempt to prevent the nefarious alien Caponians (who have taken over "The Phone Company", an amalgamation of various telecommunication companies around the world) from slowly reducing the intelligence of everybody on Earth by emitting a 60 Hz "hum" from their "Mind Bending Machine". The Skolarians, another ancient alien race, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mobile Phone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area. The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture and, therefore, mobile telephones are called ''cellular telephones'' or ''cell phones'' in North America. In addition to telephony, digital mobile phones ( 2G) support a variety of other services, such as text messaging, multimedia messagIng, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications (infrared, Bluetooth), business applications, video games and digital photography. Mobile phones offering only those capabilities are known as fea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Landline
A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses radio waves for signal transmission. Characteristics A corded landline telephone made by Siemens from c. 1997 Landline service is typically provided through the outside plant of a telephone company's central office, or wire center. The outside plant comprises tiers of cabling between distribution points in the exchange area, so that a single pair of copper wire, or an optical fiber, reaches each subscriber location, such as a home or office, at the network interface. Customer premises wiring extends from the network interface to the location of one or more telephones inside the premises. The telephone connected to a landline can be hard-wired or cordless and typically refers to the operation of wireless devices or systems in fixed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The President's Analyst
''The President's Analyst'' is a 1967 American satirical black comedy film written and directed by Ted Flicker and starring James Coburn. The film has elements of political satire and science fiction, including themes concerning modern ethics and privacy, specifically the intrusion of the telecommunications monopoly, working with the U.S. government, into citizens' private lives. The film was released theatrically on December 21, 1967, and was initially not a commercial success. However, it was reviewed favorably and eventually achieved cult status. Plot Psychiatrist Dr. Sidney Schaefer is chosen by the U.S. government to act as the president's top-secret personal psychoanalyst, from a referral by Don Masters, a Central Enquiries Agency (CEA) assassin who vetted Schaefer while undergoing his own psychoanalysis. The decision to choose Schaefer is against the advice of Henry Lux, the diminutive director of the all-male Federal Bureau of Regulation (FBR). ("Lux" resembles "Electr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Switchboard Operator
In the early days of telephony, companies used manual telephone switchboards, and switchboard operators connected calls by inserting a pair of phone plugs into the appropriate jacks. They were gradually phased out and replaced by automated systems, first those allowing direct dialing within a local area, then for long-distance and international direct dialing. Description A typical telephone switchboard has a vertical panel containing an array of jacks with a desk in front. The desk has a row of switches and two rows of plugs attached to cables that retract into the desk when not in use. Each pair of plugs was part of a cord circuit with a switch associated that let the operator participate in the call or ring the circuit for an incoming call. Each jack had a light above it that lit when the customer's telephone receiver was lifted (the earliest systems required the customer to hand-crank a magneto to alert the central office and, later, to "ring off" the completed call). Lines ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sketch Comedy
Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is used widely in variety shows, comedy talk shows, and some sitcoms and children's television series. The sketches may be improvised live by the performers, developed through improvisation before public performance, or scripted and rehearsed in advance like a play. Sketch comedians routinely differentiate their work from a "skit", maintaining that a skit is a (single) dramatized joke (or "bit") while a sketch is a comedic exploration of a concept, character, or situation. definition 3b, Merriam-Webster online. Retrieved 5/4/2019 History Sketch comedy has its origins in |
Bell System
The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over one hundred years from its creation in 1877 until its antitrust breakup in 1983. The system of companies was often colloquially called Ma Bell (as in "Mother Bell"), as it held a vertical monopoly over telecommunication products and services in most areas of the United States and Canada. At the time of the breakup of the Bell System in the early 1980s, it had assets of $150 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ) and employed over one million people. Ever since the 1910s, American antitrust regulators had been observing and accusing the Bell System of abusing its monopoly power, and had brought legal action multiple times over the decades, until in 1974 the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice brought a lawsuit against Be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lily Tomlin
Mary Jean "Lily" Tomlin (born September 1, 1939) is an American actress, comedian, writer, singer, and producer. She started her career as a stand-up comedian as well as performing off-Broadway during the 1960s. Her breakout role was on the variety show ''Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In'' from 1969 until 1973. She starred as Frankie Bergstein on the Netflix series ''Grace and Frankie'', which debuted in 2015 and earned her nominations for four Primetime Emmy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Golden Globe Award. In 1975, Tomlin made her film debut with Robert Altman's ''Nashville'', which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 1977, her performance as Margo Sperling in ''The Late Show'' won her the Silver Bear for Best Actress and nominations for the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for Best Actress. Her other notable films include '' 9 to 5'' (1980), '' All of Me'' (1984), ''Big Business'' (1988), '' Flirting with Disaster'' (1996), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
