![]() The resolution of Tom Carter's struggleįor acceptance of the concept of Interconnection permitted the creation of a Ultimately let to the Federal Communications Commission. Use of the Carterfone wasĬhallenged by the telephone companies in 1966, and a lengthy struggle began that Interconnect with the public telephone network. Jon is from Connections, a company specializingīy Carter Electronics in 1959, served a need for mobile radio users to Original CarterFone (click on it to see a bigger version): It had an acoustic couplerĬarterFone let me know and I'll put it on our page and attribute it to you. The CarterFone itself was a device that patched phone calls into 2-Way Radio equipment. It was that way before the Carterfone Decision, and it's that way The phone equipment, but a problem with the phone line coming into the building. Probably 95% of the dead line service calls on phone systems are not The Phone Company didn't care, and didn'tįigured eventually the subscriber would get tired of dealing with the problems and go back to renting from them.Īn Interconnect phone man I made a lot of money going around checking dead lineĬomplaints. Slots had dissimilar metals, which caused oxidation and intermittent operation). ![]() They often left phone lines dead because they wereĭefective, or the card cage they went into was defective (the cards and card Protective couplers were very unreliable. So manyĭecision, up until the FCC started allowing connection of FCC registered equipment inġ976 (that you could buy in a local store), subscribers had to rent a protective coupler from the phone company (maybe $10 a month per line), which supposedly protected the public telephone network from any harm caused by the (about 1970) was that someday "voice and data will merge". That's the secret of how he did what he did." On Tom's tombstone".so I responded quickly with "Here lies a In 1991, Harry Newton called me and said "Quick Helen.what would you put They stood up to AT&T, a company who specialized in crushing other Made the price of data service, even slow modems, beyond the reach of most of Government and large corporations, since the Phone Company would have surely Without thatĭeregulation, it's possible the Internet would have stayed a network used by the Whatever they needed to the telephone network, both voice and data. Other countries) followed the US lead of deregulating their telephone networkĪfter seeing the benefits US citizens saw when they were able to connect As a matter ofįact, the PTTs in just about every country in the world (a PTT is the FCC of Tom Carter fought the battle with AT&T which led to today's totalĭeregulation (well, just about) of telephone equipment in the US. That allowed anybody to connect anything to AT&T's telephone network, It allowed the Hush-A-Phone (and every other similar device) to be stuck to AT&T's phones. The Hush-A-Phone Decision was a big win overĪT&T in the US Court of Appeals, in 1956. These trinkets had phone numbers for the local coal company, funeral parlor and general store, but you couldn't attach those numbers to your phone since the phone wasn't yours. AT&T had previously won many court cases against companies who sold advertising trinkets (premiums) that slipped over or otherwise attached to their phones. An AT&T lawyer just happened to see one in a shop window on his way to lunch one day, and decided that it was his job to stop the sale of this device since it was being attached to the Phone Company's property. It had been advertised and sold in trade magazines for years. There were no electrical connections, it just slipped onto the phone. The Hush-A-Phone was a simple product that slipped over a Candlestick Phone or Telephone Handset and gave the user some privacy (the first noise canceling microphone!). The Beginning of the end of the Bell System. This is my favorite section, since it shows how ingenious some of the pioneers of the phone business were! ![]() If you don't have a wheel on your mouse, you can click on VIEW in the menu at the top of your browser, then TEXT SIZE, and then LARGEST/SMALLEST (or INCREASE/DECREASE in Firefox). This works on any web page with text (not graphics). Release the CONTROL key to scroll up and down the page. IMPORTANT NOTE: If the text is too small to read easily, you can make it bigger (or smaller) by holding down the CONTROL key, and rolling the wheel on your mouse (while holding CONTROL down). ![]() See on our site, e-mail us at and we'll try to You can click on most of the pictures on this Have some technical information for you, and some neat items for Poles wouldįeed out in all directions from a town's CentralĪds and pictures. Many "Open Wire" phone lines (not too smart). ![]()
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