The
year is almost over and, at this point, I’ll still be telling the history of
telco well into 2014. Bear with me
though. It’s an interesting story and I think it helps to explain one of the
reasons why the industry now moves so slowly.
It’s as if it has forgotten about its own roots and consistently rapid
historical evolution and settled into a monopolistic rut that it can’t seem to
shake.
One
of the things I hear from customers all the time is about the cost of
connections. As the profit margins for
businesses shrink, folks look for their suppliers to respond in kind to help
meet the bottom line. In the early
1900’s, as many of these small telephone companies would veer toward
bankruptcy, AT&T would buy them out in order to increase their overall
customer base but intentionally refuse to link them as part of its national
network.
This
increased the costs of an individual call and the company’s profits as
well. By 1914 the United States was the
world leader in the number of installed telephones with approximately seven
million units. Only Sweden was anywhere
close, finishing a close second. By 1930
that figure had swelled to almost 20 million units. Did you know that, in order to make a three
minute call between the United States and England in the late 1920's, it
required the services of at least eight operators and close to fifteen minutes
in order to make the connection? The
true surprise occurred a month later when the caller received a $75 bill for
making the call.
It’s
hard for those of us with unlimited calling packages and texting to imagine
such an expensive proposition and it clearly thwarted many a cross continent
romance back in the day. There's an
immediacy in connecting in today's global market and that capability is
possible thanks to the advances of telco that followed both the telephone and
radio. More to come….
