Yea and operator assisted up till the early 1970's still under Ma Bell. Then came ESS designed by Western Electric. ESS is the switching system. What would have taken in equipment in space the size of a Walmart was put into a space the size of the average living room. Ma Bell developed it. Oh yea the transistor was Bell Labs invention as well.
You could have any phone you liked-- as long as it was black and weighed thirty five pounds.Yea I'm 48 I remember the old black rotaries and I remember 8 party lines also. You are forgetting something here though. It was called the space race. Much of the newer technology starting in the 1970's evolved from miniaturization and the commerical application of chips and circuit boards.
A second jack in the house? Well, let's see if we can get another mortgage.
True you had to pay for it. But like I said if your wiring for your phone inside your home goes bad you better be paying the maintenance fee or know how to trouble shoot. Everything from the interface on is yours now.
Instead of tennis elbow you got phone knuckle from the rotarty dial.
Touch tones came along fairly quickly and still for reliability nothing beats a Western Electric Touch Tone Phone. {The heavy ones}
Ma Bell was not a "benign" monopoly.
Neither is your local power company. Wanna see them busted up and watch the fun during a storm? The phone company should be ran as a utility. There is something you don't quite understand going on. The phones require phone lines. That means either Buried wire cable or Buried Fiber Optic cable. Now here's the problem. Up till the split Ma Bell could afford to keep big crews on the job. Many were what was called cable splicers. They repaired the actual cables or burred new ones. They were the guys with the air duct ran into the man hole with the tarp over the top. When was the last time you saw one? Think back to the mid 1980's and how many Ma Bell trucks and vans you saw on the road. Think how many you see now even in a week.
Before the split all trouble calls were handled on a local basis. Meaning repair service was in the nearest town of fair size. You didn't get put on 30 minutes hold to Louisville, Kentucky with a never ending announcement of due to weather we are experiencing a high volume of calls. Yes somewhere in the 7 state area it is raining.
You had repairmen who were there to find the trouble if it took all day. Today's repairmen are timed and given X number of trouble tickets to clear in 8 hours. If they go to your line and it works it's clear. Most of the time it is checked remotely the morning of dispatch. If the trouble isn't present at that time they will not dispatch nor will they tell you that either.
Next item. Price gouging. Not by Ma Bell but by Bubba Bob's phone Company who now charges you $5.00 for a 1 minute call if you use your Ma Bell card because Bubba Bob owns the phone. Motels the same way. Never, ever, call home collect from a motel. How about slamming?
The changes were coming to Bell but the technology had to catch up. Now Ma Bell is basically the same as she was in the late 1980's. Even Bubba Bob likely uses MA Bells lines as does many Baby Bells. Most all use AT&T's switching also.
We use a method called ESM to gauge employee performance. You're given a set amount of time to compelte a task. If you take 25% or more of that alotted time per job you're going to end up with punish work.