Growth in the U.S. local telephone business has been strongly biased toward the largest companies getting larger. From 1916 to 1942, only about a third of U.S. households had telephone service. Hence opportunities for extensive growth in the local telephone business were relatively good. Nonetheless, AT&T’s share of operating revenue among the 75 largest telephone … Continue reading structural history of local telephone business
On March 10, 1876, telephone inventor and entrepreneur Alexander Graham Bell made his first telephone call. The Bell Telephone Company was formed in the U.S. in July of 1877. By the end of 1877, three thousand telephones were in service.[1] The first commercial telephone exchange began operation in New Haven, Connecticut, on January 28, 1878. … Continue reading opex per phone fell 4% per year, 1880 to 1916
The U.S. government nationalized all U.S. telegraph and telephone systems in 1918. That was neither a political nor economic success. … Read the post government takeover of all telephone systems
Publicly filed tariffs have been an important element of federal economic regulation in the U.S. since the formation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887. U.S. local exchange telephone companies currently file federal tariffs for their interstate access services. These tariffs are publicly available through the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s Electronic Tariff Filing System (ETFS). … Continue reading tariff inflation increases regulatory obligations
Prices for ongoing services often are much less clear than prices for retail-store products that have a price tag affixed to them. Services do not have a natural physical unit, like an item that you pick up from a shelf. Compared to a one-time purchase of physical products, an ongoing service purchase has much lower … Continue reading service pricing semantics and ontology