An independent telephone company was a telephone company providing local service in the United States or Canada that was not part of the Bell System organized by American Telephone and Telegraph. Independent telephone companies usually operated in many rural or sparsely populated areas.
The second fundamental Bell patent for telephones expired on 30 January 1894, which provided an opportunity for independent companies to provide telephone services, 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, such as Stromberg-Carlson in 1894 and Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company in 1897.
By 1903 while the Bell system had 1,278,000 subscribers on 1,514 main exchanges, the independents, excluding non-profit rural cooperatives, claimed about 2 million subscribers on 6,150 exchanges. [1]
The size ranged from small mom and pop companies run by a husband and wife team, to large independent companies, such as GTE, Theodore Gary & Company, United Telecom, ConTel and Centel, which resembled the Bell system with vertical integration. GTE was the largest non-RBOC domestic telephone company, and included local operating companies, long line (toll) companies and manufacturing companies. A small mom and pop company might have had 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. Much of this equipment was manufactured by the Automatic Electric Company, Stromberg-Carlson, and the Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company.
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 known 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, mostly through subsidiaries in Ontario and Quebec, and entirely through subsidiaries beyond those two provinces. The remaining independent telephone companies are in British Columbia (just one), Ontario and Quebec; all but three independents in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the Atlantic provinces and the northern territories were acquired by dominant provincial carriers by the 1970s, leaving some 55 independents mostly in Ontario. The dominant provincial carriers were Alberta Government Telephones (AGT), BC Tel , Manitoba Telephone System, New Brunswick Telephone Co. (Bell subsidiary since the 1960s), Newfoundland Telephone (Bell subsidiary since the 1960s), Maritime Telegraph & Telephone (Nova Scotia), Island Tel (P.E.I.) and SaskTel . Bell and the eight provincial carriers participated in the Trans-Canada Telephone System, later known as Telecom Canada. Northwestel was the largest independent by land area covered that was not included in Telecom Canada; other large independents, by customer share, were Edmonton Telephones and Thunder Bay Telephone
More restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, and the introduction of competition and mergers between competitors and some provincial carriers, resulted in the disappearance of Telecom Canada; "independent" is no longer distinguished as a formal alliance, but now as a comparison of size and share of ILEC lines. By 2001, Bell Canada remained the dominant incumbent LEC carrier in Ontario and urban areas of Quebec; Telus dominated in Alberta and B.C., Aliant Telecom encompassed all four Atlantic provinces plus former Bell areas in rural Ontario and Quebec; SaskTel remains a distinct provincial carrier; MTS encompasses Manitoba's former provincial company (Bell Canada purchased MTS in 2017; it is currently known as Bell MTS). Telus and Bell are competitors in each other's territory. There are still some independent companies in Ontario and Quebec, and one in British Columbia.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is a public organization in Canada with mandate as a regulatory agency for broadcasting and telecommunications. It was created in 1976 when it took over responsibility for regulating telecommunication carriers. Prior to 1976, it was known as the Canadian Radio and Television Commission, which was established in 1968 by the Parliament of Canada to replace the Board of Broadcast Governors. Its headquarters is located in the Central Building of Les Terrasses de la Chaudière in Gatineau, Quebec.
GTE Corporation, formerly General Telephone & Electronics Corporation (1955–1982), was the largest independent telephone company in the United States during the days of the Bell System. The company operated from 1926, with roots tracing further back than that, until 2000, when it was acquired by Bell Atlantic; with the combined companies formed under the currently operating Verizon banner.
Telus Communications Inc. (TCI) is the wholly owned principal subsidiary of Telus Corporation, a Canadian national telecommunications company that provides a wide range of telecommunications products and services including internet access, voice, entertainment, healthcare, video, smart home automation and IPTV television. The company is based in the Vancouver, British Columbia, area; it was originally based in Edmonton, Alberta, before its merger with BC Tel in 1999. Telus' wireless division, Telus Mobility, offers UMTS, and LTE-based mobile phone networks. Telus is the incumbent local exchange carrier in British Columbia and Alberta. Its primary competitors are Rogers Communications and Bell Canada. Telus is a member of the British Columbia Technology Industry Association.
Bell Canada is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun, Quebec, in Canada. It is an ILEC in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec; as such, it was a founding member of the Stentor Alliance. It is also a CLEC for enterprise customers in the western provinces.
Bell Mobility Inc. is a Canadian wireless network operator and the division of Bell Canada which offers wireless services across Canada. It operates networks using LTE and HSPA+ on its mainstream networks. Bell Mobility is the third-largest wireless carrier in Canada, with 10.1 million subscribers as of Q3 2020.
Automatic Electric Company was an American telephone equipment supplier primarily for independent telephone companies in North America, but also had a worldwide presence. With its line of automatic telephone exchanges, it was also a long-term supplier of switching equipment to the Bell System, starting in 1919. The company was the largest manufacturing unit of the Automatic Electric Group. In 1955, the company was acquired by General Telephone and Electronics (GT&E). After numerous reorganization within GTE, the company's assets came under the umbrella of Lucent in the 1990s, and subsequently part of Nokia.
An incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) is a local telephone company which held the regional monopoly on landline service before the market was opened to competitive local exchange carriers, or the corporate successor of such a firm.
Bell MTS Inc. is a subsidiary of BCE Inc. that operates telecommunications services in Manitoba.
British Columbia Telephone Company and later BC Tel was the legal name for the telephone company operating throughout the province of British Columbia, Canada. For most of its history, BC Tel was one of several regional monopolies in Canada. In 1985, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) restored competition in long-distance telephone service. In 1998, BC Tel merged with Telus to become the second largest telecommunications company in Canada.
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 and northern Alberta. 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 Service Improvement Plan (SIP) was a program, during the years 2001–2009, mandated by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to provide a defined level of basic telephone service to all Canadians, other than those so isolated that it is costly and impractical to reach. The companies completed the programs in the middle of the 2000-2009 decade, with a cut-off of availability to customers in 2007 or 2008.
Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corporation, operating as SaskTel, is a Canadian crown-owned telecommunications firm based in the province of Saskatchewan. Owned by the provincial government, it provides wireline and wireless communications services, including landline telephone, mobile networks, broadband internet, IPTV, and security services. Through a subsidiary, SaskTel International, the company has also worked on telecom infrastructure projects in countries such as Argentina and the Bahamas, as well as being the lead implementation company for the communication and control systems of the Channel Tunnel between England and France.
Allstream is a business communications provider based in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, that provides Internet Protocol (IP) connectivity, managed IP services, unified communications and voice services to its customers in the United States and Canada.
The Stentor Alliance was a formal alliance of Canada's major telecommunications companies, specifically its incumbent local exchange carriers. It derives its name from the Greek mythological figure Stentor.
Freedom Mobile, a Canadian wireless telecommunications provider owned by Québecor, holds a 6% market share of the Canadian wireless market, primarily concentrated in urban areas of Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, and Manitoba. As the fourth-largest wireless carrier in Canada, Freedom Mobile serves 2,290,497 subscribers as of November 30, 2022. In addition to mobile phone plans, Freedom also offers home internet and TV services.
VMedia Inc. is a Canadian telecommunications company and broadcast distribution provider.
A telephone exchange, also known as a telephone switch or central office, is a crucial component in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or large enterprise telecommunications systems. It facilitates the interconnection of telephone subscriber lines or digital system virtual circuits, enabling telephone calls between subscribers.
In conventional landline telephony, a non-dialable toll point or toll station was a lone station or line serving a rural subscriber many miles from the nearest central office. As it had no home telephone exchange and therefore no local calling area, no customer could dial its number; all connections to it had to be obtained manually by the long distance operator.
Xplore Inc. is a Canadian rural internet service provider. It is the largest rural focused broadband service provider in Canada.