In 1876, more or less, Alexander Graham Bell shouted to his assistant, “Watson, I need you!” At least that is what Don Ameche led me to believe when I watched his portrayal of Bell in a movie first released well before I was born. In addition to giving us the telephone, Bell birthed one of the corporate behemoths of the early to late twentieth century, AT&T. While AT&T was not the only provider of telephone service, it was by far the largest. In the latter half of that century it provided local calling service through subsidiary regional bell operating companies. These included Southern Bell, Southeastern Bell, Southwestern Bell, Atlantic Bell, and Pacific Bell. The RBOCs did not serve everywhere. Among the competitors to Bell were GTE and Centel. AT&T owned a manufacturing arm, Western Electric, to build its phones, and a research and development company, Bell Labs. In addition to developing new communications technologies, Bell Labs played a major role in the development of Unix.

Telephone companies enjoyed what was termed a “natural monopoly.” Because cables had to be mounted on poles, and poles required easements on property, it was inefficient and in many cases impractical to have multiple providers sharing infrastructure. This removed competition, and in exchange phone service became regulated as a public utility. Without competition, customer service was not a priority in many cases. Any baby boomer you ask can likely tell you about one or more seemingly interminable waits for a phone company technician to show up, well beyond when promised, to install a hard-wired phone in their house or office.

By the early 1980’s technology was allowing more possibilities. Fiber optic cable was being put in place. Switchboards, an essential component of the landline system (technically called the Public Switched Telephone Network, PSTN), and humorously called Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS), were replaced by computerized switching equipment. Interconnection between a regional provider and multiple long distance providers was possible. The Justice Department had sued AT&T under antitrust law, and ultimately it was broken into separate companies. By the early 1990’s, AT&T was a shadow of its former self. The cell phone market was booming with hundreds of competitors, but consolidation in that market was already underway. And the regional bells, which were split by the court order, were recombining. One notable combination was the merger of NYNEX and Atlantic Bell into Verizon. I recall an early episode of The West Wing that showed a flashback supposedly taking place a few years before. The Washington pay phone in the scene bore the name Verizon, but in the flashback’s time frame the phone should have read Atlantic Bell, which had earlier swallowed the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, C&P.

A few years later, after Southwestern Bell had merged with Southeastern Bell to form SBC, it bought their former parent company and a newly reinvigorated AT&T emerged.

I was reminded of all this history yesterday. We’ve been renovating our Durham house for the past few months. The siding contractor finished its work yesterday, and my wife then noticed a set of wires that used to be on or above the house were lying on the ground or in the air at eye level. I had suspected that this was our old phone cable, probably in place since the house was built in 1974. We had last had an active landline more than fifteen years ago, as I had moved our service to Vonage not long after it debuted.

You can see the GTE name on the termination box above. Verizon bought GTE not long after NYNEX and Atlantic Bell merged, and Verizon was our landline provider before we switched to Vonage. So after Lisa told me about the downed lines, I wanted to report them to Verizon so it could send out a technician to remove the lines. Like many phone companies, Verizon is largely out of the copper phone line business. In many areas they offer FIOS, and their major public presence is in wireless communications. Hence, they don’t list a contact for removing old infrastructure. It took multiple online chat sessions and phone calls to find someone who would schedule a technician to visit the house. Since the company’s major customer identifier is a phone number, and my cellular number has nothing to do with our house or its address, it was difficult to convey what I needed done.

As George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I don’t think the majority of today’s mobile phone users have any idea about what a residential landline phone was. It was tough explaining the context to the Verizon customer service reps. If a somewhat younger person than I had been looking over the house, I wonder if they’d know how to get someone to take out the line.