equipment. The regional Bell companies were restrained from manufacturing
telephone equipment and entering the bulk of the long-distance business
and some “information” services, but they could, with the permission of
the court, enter other businesses. The “new” AT&T’s business consisted
of long-distance services, services for all customer-terminal equipment
then in place, research and development, and the Western Electric manufacturing
company. AT&T was in competition with every company that chose to enter
its markets, and it was free to enter nearly any new markets it desired.
At this writing, each of the new companies,
divested with a common heritage and common culture, is finding its own
way in the new and exciting age of information. Over time they will establish
individual cultures and heritages while continuing as a part of the network
of communications services for the entire United States. The agreements,
business and personal relationships, and standardized procedures built
up over a century under the integrated Bell System have been replaced by
new, arms-length business contracts.
Some changes have occurred at both levels
of the telecommunications regulatory scheme: states have deregulated certain
services either partially or wholly; the FCC has eliminated the difficult
business separation requirements placed on AT&T in the early 1980s
and moved to replace the unwieldy rate-of-return constraints with price
caps. However, federal and state regulation is still pervasive and is applied
to the telephone companies’ monopoly local exchange business and to AT&T’s
competitive telecommunications services but not to its long-distance rivals.
Moreover, the federal judge who presided
over the trial and the consent agreement regularly makes major decisions
pertaining to compliance with the decree. These decisions sometimes affect
the structure and performance of the industry and the services the American
public receives.
In the relatively short period since the
new companies emerged, many changes in company organization, markets, and
products have taken place. New technologies are being employed to provide
new products and still better service. Change and adaptation – long-standing
characteristics of the Bell System – continue to be central aspects of
the telecommunications industry today.
(1)
How a Telephone works now is pretty much
the same as I did in the 1920?s. This is how the handset looks like inside.
As you can see, it only contains 3 parts
and they are all simple:
 A switch to connect and disconnect
the phone from the network. This switch is generally called the hook switch.
It connects when you lift the handset.
 A speaker, which is generally
a little 50 cent 8-ohm speaker of some sort
 A microphone. In the past,
telephone microphones have been as simple as carbon granules compressed
between two thin metal plates. Sounds waves from your voice compress and
decompress the granules, changing the resistance of the granules and modulating
the current flowing through the microphone.
That’s it! You can dial this simple phone
by rapidly tapping the hook switch – all telephone switches still recognize
“pulse dialing” like this. If you pick the phone up and rapidly tap the
switch hook 4 times, the Phone Company?s switch will understand that you
have dialed a 4, for example.
The only problem with the phone shown
above is that when you talk you will hear your voice through the speaker.
Most people find that annoying, so any real phone contains a device called
a duplex coil or something functionally equivalent to block the sound of
your own voice from reaching your ear. A modern telephone also includes
a bell so it can ring and a touch-tone keypad and frequency generator.
A “real” phone looks like this:
Still, it’s pretty simple! In a modern
phone there is an electronic microphone, amplifier and circuit to replace
the carbon granules and loading coil. A speaker and a circuit to generate
a pleasant ringing tone often replace the mechanical bell. But a normal
$6.95 telephone that you buy at Wal-Mart remains one of the simplest devices
ever.
The telephone network starts in your house.
A pair of copper wires runs from a box at the road to a box (often called
an “entrance bridge”) at your house. From there the pair of wires is connected
to each phone jack in your house (usually using red and green wires). If
your house has two phone lines, then two separate pairs of copper wire
run from the road to your house. The second pair is usually colored yellow
and black inside your house.
Along the road runs a thick cable packed
with 100 or more copper pairs. Depending on where you are located, this
thick cable will run directly to the phone company’s switch in your area,
or it will run to a box about the size of a refrigerator that acts as a
digital concentrator. The concentrator digitizes your voice at a sample
rate of 8,000 samples per second and 8-bit resolution. It then combines
your voice with hundreds of others and sends them all down a single wire
(usually a coax cable or a fiber-optic cable) to the phone company office.
Either way, your line connects into a line card at the switch so you can
hear the dial tone when you pick up your phone. If you are calling someone
connected to the same office, then the switch simply creates a loop between
your phone and the phone of the person you called. If it’s a long-distance
call, then your voice is digitized and combined with millions of other
voices on the long-distance network. Your voice normally travels over a
fiber-optic line to the office of the receiving party, but it may also
be transmitted by satellite or by microwave towers.
(2)
Alexander Graham Bell is known as the
inventor of the telephone in Canada, U.S. and Scotland. Yet other countries
that have no ethnic relation to him try to find inventors in their country.
There is an on going dispute on who invented the telephone first and when
it was put into place. Even in our own country many legal battles have
occurred to show whom the real inventor of the telephone was. At both times
Gray and Bell applied for patents neither phone carried voices Gray?s patent
was just a caveat a work in progress. There are many historians who firmly
believe that Gray, and not bell, invented the telephone. Gray certainly
thought he had invented it. Other suits were filed for the Reis machine,
which was just a primitive device that made weird sounds and unless beaten
it would never carry a voice. 582 lawsuits were filed against AT&T
and Bell and they never lost a case. There is so much information on AT&T
that I would not be able to quantify it in a mere sentence. I?m awe struck
that a corporation can be so influential on the way Americans do normal
everyday activities. AT&T will surely be around for a long time.
Bibliography
(1)Bell System History
http://www.
(2)HowStuffWorks
http://www.howstuffworks.com/telephone.htm
http://www.howstuffworks.com/telephone4.htm
A Capsule History of the Bell System
http://www.bellsystem.com/tribute/capsule_history_of_the_bell_system.html
Who really invented the telephone?
http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/tribute/telephone_inventors.html
Bill’s 200-Year Condensed History of Telecommunications
http://www.cclab.com/billhist.htm