Local telephone service is the provision of telecommunications networks and services within a limited geographic region.
Traditionally, local telephone service was provided by small companies based in given cities and towns as opposed to larger, national or international companies. Telephone calls outside of the local area provided for by these companies were patched through long-distance networks that were, until de-regulation, operation mainly by AT&T. Some providers of local services were regional Bell operating companies, but not all local telephone companies were a regional Bell operating company or tied to one at the local level, especially after de-regulation of 1996. After de-regulation, these regional Bell operating companies continued providing the same technical services despite being under a different type of corporate structure.
Many communities in the United States had local telephone companies and in rural areas, up until around the early 1980s (perhaps later in some cases) party lines were commonplace. The local telephone company was responsible for providing equipment and services to their customers in most cases although over time, as technology changed, so did the nature of the technical services thus provided.
At one time telephones were leased from the local phone company rather than sold outright to customers. Many customers had rotary telephones that were leased prior to the 1980s. Despite the fact that the leasing system was not intended to promote this situation, customers in some cases ended up paying ten times the worth of their phones over the course of decades-long leases. Local telephone companies also provided PBX (Private Branch Exchange) services for local businesses that needed these switchboard and internal telecommunications services. Local telephone companies more recently become involved in providing Internet by DSL and dial-up services.
Local telephone wires terminate at the central office (telephone exchange), a structure containing the hardware needed to switch calls among local lines and long-distance networks. Thus, when a call was placed by a customer outside the local calling area, the central office would switch the call to the respective long-distance network. As technology advanced, central offices offered more services and their technical abilities improved. Services such as Caller ID, call return call-waiting, three-way calling, and voice-mail were first offered via central office-based technology although later PBXs also provided them. The role of the local phone company includes serving a given community and interfacing with the large long-distance carriers. Prior to the advent of cell phones, most phone calls were made via landlines and local companies were thereby involved in some capacity in this communication. Deregulation and especially cell phones have reduced the need for local telephone services while Digital subscriber line Internet service and other services give local companies new roles in the telecommunications industry.
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.
In telephony, the demarcation point is the point at which the public switched telephone network ends and connects with the customer's on-premises wiring. It is the dividing line which determines who is responsible for installation and maintenance of wiring and equipment—customer/subscriber, or telephone company/provider. The demarcation point varies between countries and has changed over time.
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.
A voicemail system is a computer-based system that allows people to leave a recorded message when the recipient is unable to answer the phone. The caller is prompted to leave a message and the recipient can retrieve said message at a later time.
4-1-1 is a telephone number for local directory assistance in Canada and the United States. Until the early 1980s, 4-1-1 — and the related 1-1-3 number — were free to call in most jurisdictions.
A competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), in the United States and Canada, is a telecommunications provider company competing with other, already established carriers, generally the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC).
BellSouth, LLC was an American telecommunications holding company based in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating Companies after the U.S. Department of Justice forced the American Telephone & Telegraph Company to divest itself of its regional telephone companies on January 1, 1984.
Singtel Optus Pty Limited is an Australian telecommunications company headquartered in Macquarie Park, a suburb in the Northern Sydney region of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Singaporean telecommunications company Singtel.
The public switched telephone network (PSTN) is the aggregate of the world's telephone networks that are operated by national, regional, or local telephony operators. It provides infrastructure and services for public telephony. The PSTN consists of telephone lines, fiber-optic cables, microwave transmission links, cellular networks, communications satellites, and undersea telephone cables interconnected by switching centers, such as central offices, network tandems, and international gateways, which allow telephone users to communicate with each other.
Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers.
Altafiber, Inc., formerly Cincinnati Bell, is a regional telecommunications service provider based in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. It provides landline telephone, fiber-optic Internet, and IPTV services through its subsidiaries Altafiber Home Phone and Hawaiian Telcom, which are the incumbent local exchange carriers for the Greater Cincinnati metropolitan area and Hawaii. Other subsidiaries provide enterprise information technology services and long distance calling.
A business telephone system is a telephone system typically used in business environments, encompassing the range of technology from the key telephone system (KTS) to the private branch exchange (PBX).
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.
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 breakup of the Bell System was mandated 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. This effectively took the monopoly that was the Bell System and split it into entirely separate companies that would continue to provide telephone service. 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.
Embarq Corporation was the largest independent local exchange carrier in the United States, serving customers in 18 states and providing local, long-distance, high-speed data and wireless services to residential and business customers. It had been formerly the local telephone division (LTD) of Sprint Nextel until 2006, when it was spun off as an independent company. Embarq produced more than $6 billion in revenues annually, and had approximately 18,000 employees. It was based in Overland Park, Kansas.
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.
PSTN network topology is the switching network topology of a telephone network connected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
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.
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 written 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.
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