An Independent telephone company in the United States was a telephone company providing local service that 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.
The second fundamental Bell patent for telephones had expired on 30 January 1894, and the way was now open for independent companies, although some had been established before that date. The Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange company had been formed on 30 October 1891. The first Strowger switch went into operation on 3 November 1892 in LaPorte, Indiana, with 75 subscribers and capacity for 99. Independent manufacturing companies were established, Stromberg-Carlson in 1894 and Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company in 1897.
By 1903 while the Bell system had 1,278,000 subscribers on 1514 main exchanges, the independents (excluding non-profit rural cooperatives) claimed about 2 million subscribers on 6150 exchanges. [1] Later (see Western Electric) one estimate was 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, Theodore Gary & Company, United Telecom, ConTel and Centel resembled the Bell system with vertical integration. GTE was the largest non-RBOC domestic telco, and 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.