Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Telecommunications |
Predecessor | American Telephone and Telegraph Company |
Founded | 1984 |
Defunct | 2010 |
Successor | AT&T Communications |
Headquarters | Bedminster, New Jersey , United States |
Products | Long distance |
Parent | AT&T Corporation (1984–2005) AT&T Inc. (2005–2010) |
Website | www |
AT&T Communications, Inc., doing business as AT&T Communications, was a division of the AT&T Corporation that, through 23 subsidiaries, provided interexchange carrier and long-distance telephone services.
AT&T Long Lines initially began with wire and cable, but as technology progressed, it transitioned to a microwave radio relay network that provided long-distance services for AT&T and its customers. Telephone connections to other countries used this network. By the 1970s, 95% of long-distance and 70% of intercity telephone calls in the United States were carried by AT&T.
Before using microwave relay and coaxial cables, AT&T used open wire lines for long-distance service. In 1911, the system connected New York to Denver. [1] The introduction of repeater towers allowed such connections to reach across North America. Starting in the 1920s, the company increasingly used long-distance coaxial cable and carrier systems.
With improved klystrons and other microwave devices devised during World War II, higher frequencies allowed far more channels on a given link. This allowed a single microwave relay to carry thousands of telephone calls. Bell Labs developed a practical system known as TD-2, produced by Western Electric. The system was designed not only to carry telephone calls, but also television signals, allowing programs to be sent from city to city. Microwaves are line of sight technology, so building such a network required towers built in strings between the endpoints, but this was still much less expensive than stringing the equivalent number of cables between the two points. The first complete system was installed between New York and Chicago and opened on September 1, 1950.
Given the cold war period in which the microwave relay system was designed, the AT&T Long Lines network was engineered to survive a nuclear attack. The reasoning for this was because the system carried military communications and data, in addition to the normal traffic from the public and corporations. The sites were hardened through the use of tough concrete buildings and in some cases, bunkers. Each base station typically contained a diesel generator, air filtration system, and toiletries common to fallout shelters of the day. All of this equipment was manufactured by Western Electric. [2] The buildings typically had no windows, but featured louvers to allow for ventilation and cooling for the electronics housed inside. Many base stations were shielded from EMP blasts, and the system was designed with automatic routing which would automatically avoid towers that were knocked out in an attack or other outage. One famous example of a hardened AT&T Long Lines site is 33 Thomas Street in Manhattan, it was designed to withstand a nuclear blast and has no windows.
Formal opening of the United States coast-to-coast connection was on August 17, 1951, via AT&T's network control center in New York City. A presidential address from Harry Truman at the San Francisco Peace Conference on September 4, 1951 [3] opened the network, demonstrating coast-to-coast television service. The first regularly scheduled show to use this was Edward R. Murrow's See It Now on November 18, 1951. Later the network allowed events such as American Bandstand and ABC's Monday Night Football to be broadcast live nationally and permitted distribution of regional sports events, such as Saturday football games prior to the adoption of satellite communications in the 1970s.
Long Lines briefly published a periodical, TWX , targeted to companies that used AT&T's equipment and services, particularly TeletypeWriter eXchange, from which it took its name. The periodical was discontinued in 1952. [4]
While coaxial links continued to connect major US cities, the primary links had moved to the microwave systems by the late 1960s.
By the 1980s, alternatives such as fiber optics and satellites supplemented and eventually replaced the microwave system.
In 1950, New York City's five boroughs could be dialed directly by subscribers from various communities in New Jersey with the digits '1-1' followed by the seven-digit telephone number. While New York City received the area code 212 when AT&T formulated the first nationwide telephone numbering plan in October 1947, it wouldn't be until 1951 when Englewood, New Jersey, customers would dial their calls to New York City using the prefix 212, as well as other area codes to reach many cities in the nation. New York City's five boroughs also had been dialing northeastern New Jersey as 11+ the two letters and five digits of the New Jersey number.
The use of area code 201 to call New Jersey from New York City only began latter in the 1950s. Other cities in northeastern New Jersey were dialable in 1951 (and for a few years prior) from Englewood by simply dialing the two letters of the exchange name and remaining five digits. In addition to New York City, the Nassau County part of Long Island was dialable from Englewood and Teaneck using area code 516. Also Westchester County, Rockland County, and portions of Orange and Putnam Counties were also dialable from Englewood and Teaneck in 1951 using area code 914.
Early in the 20th century, the telephone companies organized a "Separations and Settlements" process by which Long Lines and the local companies divided the revenues of long-distance calls according to their respective costs. The mid-century advent of microwave and other high capacity systems dramatically cut the cost of long-haul operations, but pricing did not decline proportionally. Rather, the local fraction of revenue-sharing rose to subsidize local service.
AT&T Communications became one of the three core sales units of AT&T after reorganization of assets.
AT&T divided AT&T Communications into 22 operating companies, serving the regions of each Bell Operating Company that was spun off. Some of these companies are currently operating:
The other companies, which have been merged into AT&T Corp., included:
Following the Telecommunications Act of 1996, AT&T Communications began reselling Bell Operating Company-provided telephone service at lower prices to compete with the Baby Bells. Their names were: Ameritech, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, NYNEX, Pacific Telesis, Southwestern Bell, and US West. The advertising campaign which had a broad appeal was named AT&T CallVantage.
In 2005, SBC Communications purchased AT&T Corp., the parent company of AT&T Communications. SBC had already been offering its own long-distance services through SBC Long Distance LLC in its own territory in competition with other long-distance companies. As a result, AT&T Communications was refocused to seek new customers outside of the AT&T 13-state region served by its Bell Operating Companies.
In 2010, AT&T Communications (and subsidiary AT&T Communications of New England) was merged into AT&T Corp. [5] In 2012, 17 more of the AT&T Communications companies were dissolved into AT&T Corp., leaving only the companies in Indiana, New York, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. as the last remnants of the 1984-created structure. On July 28, 2017, AT&T announced a new AT&T Communications corporate division, which will house AT&T Mobility, DirecTV, U-Verse, AT&T Business, and Technology and Operations Group. [6]
Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF) is a telecommunication signaling system using the voice-frequency band over telephone lines between telephone equipment and other communications devices and switching centers. DTMF was first developed in the Bell System in the United States, and became known under the trademark Touch-Tone for use in push-button telephones supplied to telephone customers, starting in 1963. DTMF is standardized as ITU-T Recommendation Q.23. It is also known in the UK as MF4.
Direct distance dialing (DDD) is a telecommunication service feature in North America by which a caller may, without operator assistance, call any other user outside the local calling area. Direct dialing by subscribers typically requires extra digits to be dialed as prefixes to the directory telephone number of the destination. International Direct Distance Dialing (IDDD) extends the system beyond the geographic boundaries of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP).
The Automatic Voice Network was a worldwide American military telephone system. The system was built starting in 1963, based on the Army's existing Switch Communications Automated Network (SCAN) system.
The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is a telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Zone 1 and has the telephone country code 1. Some North American countries, most notably Mexico, do not participate with the NANP.
The Pacific Bell Telephone Company (Pac Bell) is a telephone company that provides telephone service in California. The company is owned by AT&T through AT&T Teleholdings, and, though separate, is now marketed as “AT&T”. The company has been known by a number of names during which its service area has changed. The formal name of the company from the 1910s through the 1984 Bell System divestiture was The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company. As of 2002, the name “Pacific Bell” is no longer used in marketing, although Pacific Bell is still the holder of record for the infrastructure of cables and fiber through much of California.
Area codes 201 and 551 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) in the U.S. State of New Jersey. Area code 201 was the area code assigned to the entire state of New Jersey in 1947, when the North American area code system was formed. After splits in 1956, 1991, and 1997, it is assigned to the northeastern portion of the state, including most of Hudson and Bergen counties, bordering New York City. Major cities in the numbering plan area include Bayonne, Jersey City, Hoboken, Hackensack, Secaucus and Englewood. Area code 551 was added to this numbering plan area in 2001 in formation of an overlay. Area code 201 is also assigned for wireless services in some rate centers in the 973 and 908 numbering plan areas, such as Newark, Morristown, and New Brunswick.
Seven-digit dialing is a telephone dialing procedure customary in some territories of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for dialing telephone numbers in the same numbering plan area (NPA). NANP telephone numbers consist of ten digits, of which the leading three are the area code. In seven-digit dialing it is not necessary to dial the area code. The procedure is also sometimes known as local format or network format.
Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) was a cable television provider in the United States, and for most of its history was controlled by Bob Magness and John Malone.
In telecommunications, a long-distance call (U.S.) or trunk call is a telephone call made to a location outside a defined local calling area. Long-distance calls are typically charged a higher billing rate than local calls. The term is not necessarily synonymous with placing calls to another telephone area code.
Rochester Telephone Corporation was a company that provided local telephone service to Rochester, New York. The company was founded in 1920 as a merger of Rochester Telephonic Exchange and Rochester Telephone Company. In 1995 the company became Frontier Corporation, trading on the NYSE under the FRO symbol. Ownership passed to Global Crossing in 1999, and then, in 2001, to Citizens Utilities Corporation, which later changed its name to Frontier Communications.
Northwestel Inc. is a Canadian telecommunications company that is the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) and long-distance carrier in the territories of Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and part of Northern British Columbia. Originally established in 1979 by the Canadian National Railway from CN's northern telecommunications assets, it has been owned by BCE Inc. since 1988.
The monopoly position of the Bell System in the U.S. was ended on January 8, 1982, by a consent decree providing that AT&T Corporation would, as had been initially proposed by AT&T, relinquish control of the Bell Operating Companies, which had provided local telephone service in the United States. AT&T would continue to be a provider of long-distance service, while the now-independent Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs), nicknamed the "Baby Bells", would provide local service, and would no longer be directly supplied with equipment from AT&T subsidiary Western Electric.
Verizon New Jersey, Inc., formerly New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, is the Bell Operating Company serving the U.S. state of New Jersey. In 1984, the Bell System Divestiture split New Jersey Bell off into a Regional Bell Operating Company, along with the 21 other BOCs AT&T had a majority stake in. On January 1, 1984, New Jersey Bell became part of Bell Atlantic.
The L-carrier system was one of a series of carrier systems developed by AT&T for high-capacity transmission for long-distance communications. Over a period from the late 1930s to the 1970s, the system evolved in six significant phases of development, designated by Bell System engineers as L-1 through L-5, and L-5E. Coaxial cable was the principal transmission medium in all stages, initially lending the system another description i.e. the coaxial system. It was the successor to a series of previous carrier systems, typically identified by capital letters. In the 1960s, the system was hardened against the dangers of the Cold War using complete placement of all terminal and repeater equipment in hardened underground vaults.
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 100 years from its creation in 1877 until its antitrust breakup in 1983. The system of companies was often colloquially called Ma 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 and employed over one million people.
The original North American area codes were established by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1947, after the demonstration of regional Operator Toll Dialing during the World War II period. The program had the goal of speeding the connecting times for long-distance calling by eliminating intermediary telephone operators. Expanding this technology for national use required a comprehensive and universal, continent-wide telephone numbering plan.
AT&T Corporation, commonly referred to as AT&T, an abbreviation for its former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was an American telecommunications company that provided voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agencies.
Telex is a telecommunication service that provides text-based message exchange over the circuits of the public switched telephone network or by private lines. The technology operates on switched station-to-station basis with teleprinter devices at the receiving and sending locations. Telex was a major method of sending text messages electronically between businesses in the post–World War II period. Its usage went into decline as the fax machine grew in popularity in the 1980s.
The history of AT&T dates back to the invention of the telephone. The Bell Telephone Company was established in 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell, who obtained the first US patent for the telephone, and his father-in-law, Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Bell and Hubbard also established American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885, which acquired the Bell Telephone Company and became the primary telephone company in the United States. This company maintained an effective monopoly on local telephone service in the United States until anti-trust regulators agreed to allow AT&T to retain Western Electric and enter general trades computer manufacture and sales in return for its offer to split the Bell System by divesting itself of ownership of the Bell Operating Companies in 1982.
TD-2 was a microwave relay system developed by Bell Labs and used by AT&T to build a cross-country network of repeaters for telephone and television transmission. The same system was also used to build the Canadian Trans-Canada Skyway system by Bell Canada, and later, many other companies in many countries to build similar networks for both civilian and military communications.