Communications Service Provider on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
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
The Worldwide History Of Telecommunications
Wiley-IEEE, 2003, ,
Village Telco
- site about microtelcos
Business Telecoms Company
- site about business broadband {{DEFAULTSORT:Telephone Company
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
Mobile telephony is the provision of telephone services to phones which may move around freely rather than stay fixed in one location. Telephony is supposed to specifically point to a voice-only service or connection, though sometimes the li ...
, telephone companies now include wireless carriers, or mobile network operator
A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a wireless service provider, wireless carrier, cellular company, or mobile network carrier, is a provider of wireless communications services that owns or controls all the elements necessary to sell ...
s.
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
Supplier convergence is a business model in which a company offers a combination of services or products that were previously supplied by separate companies. It is not to be confused with product convergence, where one product combines and repla ...
in the industry continues.
In the past, most TSPs were government owned
State ownership, also called government ownership and public ownership, is the ownership of an industry, asset, or enterprise by the state or a public body representing a community, as opposed to an individual or private party. Public owner ...
and operated in most countries, due to the nature of capital
Capital may refer to:
Common uses
* Capital city, a municipality of primary status
** List of national capital cities
* Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences
* Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...
expenditure involved in it. But today there are many private players in most regions of the world, and even most of the government owned companies have been privatized.
History
In 1913, theKingsbury 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 retu ...
allowed more than 20,000 independent telephone companies in the United States to use the long distance trunks of Bell Telephone Company
The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1877, by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company – the New Englan ...
.
Popular culture
*Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing
Amusement is the state of experiencing humorous and entertaining events or situations while the person or a ...
Lily Tomlin frequently satirized the telephone industry (and the country's then-dominant 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 hundr ...
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'', The Phone Company (TPC) is depicted as plotting to enslave humanity by replacing landlines with brain-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
*Bell Telephone Company
The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1877, by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company – the New Englan ...
, forerunner of AT&T in the U.S.
* 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 ...
* 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 carrie ...
(in Canada and the U.S.)
* Communications service provider
* History of the telephone
* Incumbent local exchange carrier (of the Bell System)
* Individual communication services and tariffs
* 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 ...
* List of telephone operating companies
* List of mobile network operators
* Mobile network operator
A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a wireless service provider, wireless carrier, cellular company, or mobile network carrier, is a provider of wireless communications services that owns or controls all the elements necessary to sell ...
* Plain old telephone service (POTS)
* Public switched telephone network
The public switched telephone network (PSTN) provides Communications infrastructure, infrastructure and services for public Telecommunications, telecommunication. The PSTN is the aggregate of the world's circuit-switched telephone networks that ...
* Telecommunications Industry Association (for the development of U.S. telecom standards)
* Regional Bell Operating Company (in the U.S.)
* Service provider
*
*
References
;Citations ;Bibliography * Huurdeman, Anton AThe Worldwide History Of Telecommunications
Wiley-IEEE, 2003, ,
External links
Village Telco
- site about microtelcos
Business Telecoms Company
- site about business broadband {{DEFAULTSORT:Telephone Company