Independent telephone company

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An Independent telephone company in the United States was a telephone company providing local service which was not part of the Bell system group of companies, "Ma Bell", before the 1984 Bell System divestiture or breakup of the Bell system. They usually operated in rural or less densely populated areas than those of the Bell operating companies. One estimate (see Western Electric) is that there were 1300 "independent" telephone companies.

The size ranged up from the small “mom and pop” companies run by a husband and wife team, with the husband doing the outside lines work and the wife operating a manual switchboard. Later these small companies would have a Class 5 telephone switch providing local automatic service (sometimes called a Community Dial Office), probably manufactured by the Automatic Electric Company, Stromberg-Carlson or the Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company.

Large independent companies like GTE and Continental Telephone resembled the Bell system with vertical integration; GTE included local operating companies, long line (toll) companies and manufacturing companies.

From 1949 the Rural Electrification Authority (REA), now the Rural Utilities Service, could provide assistance to telephone co-operatives to extend telephone service in rural areas.

The voice of the smaller independents were the two magazines, Telephony and Telephone Engineer and Management (TE&M), both from Chicago. The United States Independent Telephone Association (USITA), their trade association, became the United States Telecom Association

Bryant Pond in Woodstock, Maine was famous as having the last manual magneto (hand-crank) telephone exchange in America. The family-owned Bryant Pond Telephone Company was operated from a two-position magneto switchboard in the living room of owners Barbara and Elden Hathaway. In 1981 the company was purchased by the Oxford County Telephone & Telegraph Company, a nearby larger independent company, and automatic service was provided in 1983.

In Canada Bell Canada has a dominant position as a local service provider, particularly east of Manitoba and in the Northern territories, and many of the independent telephone companies are in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec.