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1 History

The American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation was set up on March 3, 1885 to run the nation's first long-distance telephone network. Starting from New York the network reached Chicago in 1892, and San Francisco in 1915Events January 12 The Rocky Mountain National Park is established by an act of Congress. January 12 United States House of Representatives rejects proposal to give women the right to vote. January 13 An earthquake (6. 8 in Richter scale) in Avezzano, Ital. Transatlantic services started in 1927Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s Years: 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 See also 1927 in aviation 1927 in film 1927 in literature 1927 in mu using two-way radio, but the first transatlanticA transatlantic telephone cable is a submarine communications cable that carries telephone traffic under the Atlantic Ocean between North America and Europe. While the first transatlantic telegraph cable had been laid in 1858 ( Cyrus Field), it had only o submarine telephone cable did not arrive until 19561956 is a leap year starting on Sunday. see link for calendar) Events January January 1 End of Anglo- Egyptian Condominium in Sudan. January 16 President Gamal Abdal Nasser of Egypt vows to reconquer Palestine January 26 1956 Winter Olympic Games open in, with TAT-1TAT-1 (Transatlantic No. 1) was the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system. It was laid between Gallanach Bay, near Oban, Scotland and Clarenville, Newfoundland between 1955 and 1956. It was inaugurated on September 25, 1956, initially carry.

The formation of the Bell Telephone Company superseded an agreement between Alexander Graham BellAlexander Graham Bell ( March 3, 1847 August 2, 1922) was a scientist, inventor, and founder of the Bell telephone company. In addition to his work in telecommunications technology, he also was responsible for important advances in aviation and hydrofoil and his financiers, principal among them Gardiner G. Hubbard and Thomas Sanders. Renamed the National Bell Telephone Company in March 1879Events January January 11 Anglo-Zulu War begins January 22 Zulu troops massacre British troops at the Battle of Isandlwana. At Rorke's Drift, outnumbered British soldiers drive the attackers away after hours of fighting. February February 12 At New York C, it became the American Bell Telephone Company in March 1880. By 1881, it had bought a controlling interest in the Western Electric Company from Western Union. Only three years earlier, Western Union had turned down Gardiner Hubbard's offer to sell it all rights to the telephone for $100,000.

Bell's patent on the telephone expired in 1894, but the company was successful in staving off competition through such tactics as harassment lawsuits and price undercutting. On December 30, 1899, the American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation bought the assets of American Bell, creating a de facto American telephone monopoly. It was known as the Bell System because Bell had gradually acquired all the companies that licensed its telephone equipment.

The telephone market was very competitive in the early 20th century. During this period, AT&T officials spread rumors that the company was not doing well; this caused nervous investors to sell stock in companies contracted to AT&T. AT&T would then buy the stock in these companies cheaply, and soon established itself nationwide as the primary provider of telephone service. In 1907 AT&T president Theodore Vail proposed that a formal monopoly would be more efficient. The federal government accepted this principle, initially in the Kingsbury Commitment of 1913.

For most of the 20th century, AT&T subsidiary AT&T Long Lines thus enjoyed a near-total monopoly on long distance telephone service in the United States. AT&T also controlled 22 Bell Operating Companies which provided local telephone service to most of the United States. While there were many "independent telephone companies," General Telephone being the most significant, the Bell System was far larger than all the others, and widely considered a monopoly itself.

During the early 1920s, AT&T bought Lee De Forest's patents on the "audion", the first triode vacuum tube, which let them enter the radio business. Thanks to the pressures of World War I, AT&T and RCA owned all useful patents on vacuum tubes. RCA staked a position in wireless communication; AT&T pursued the use of tubes in telephone amplifiers. Some patent allies and partners in RCA were angered when the two companies' research on tubes began to overlap; there were many patent disputes.

AT&T, RCA, and their patent allies and partners finally settled their disputes in 1926 by compromise. AT&T decided to focus on the telephone business as a communications common carrier, and sold its broadcasting subsidiary Broadcasting Corporation of America to RCA. The assets included station WEAF , which for some time had broadcast from AT&T headquarters in New York City. In return, RCA signed a service agreement with AT&T, ensuring any radio network RCA started would have transmission connections provided by AT&T. Both companies agreed to cross-license patents, ending that aspect of the dispute. RCA, GE, and Westinghouse were now free to combine their assets to form the National Broadcasting Company, or NBC network.

In 1925, AT&T created a new unit called Bell Telephone Laboratories, commonly Bell Labs. This research and development unit proved highly successful, pioneering, among other things, radio astronomy, the transistor, the photovoltaic cell, the Unix operating system, and the C programming language. However, its parent company did not always capitalize on these achievements.

The rest of the telephone monopoly lasted until final settlement of a 1974 U.S. Department of Justice antitrust suit against AT&T on January 8, 1982, under which AT&T agreed to divest its local exchange service operating companies. Even though the Department of Defense did not want AT&T to be broken, effective January 1, 1984, AT&T's local operations were split into seven independent Regional Bell Operating Companies known as 'Baby Bells'. AT&T, reduced in value by about 70%, continued to run all its long distance services, although it lost some market share in the ensuing years to competitors MCI and Sprint.

In 1991, AT&T absorbed NCR Corporation (National Cash Register), hoping to capitalize on the burgeoning personal computer market, but was unable to extract lasting financial or technological gains from the merger. After deregulation of the U.S. telecom industry via the Telecommunications Act of 1996, NCR was divested again. At the same time, AT&T's equipment manufacturing operations and the renowned Bell Laboratories were spun off into Lucent Technologies. The industry as a whole has witnessed numerous other reorganizations since the 1990s, both due to deregulation and because of technological advances reducing demand and pricing power in telecommunications.

In 1997, AT&T hired former IBM executive Michael Armstrong as its chief executive officer. Armstrong's vision was to change AT&T from a long-distance carrier into a global "telecommunications supermarket," eyeing Internet services for the booming dot-com industry.

Armstrong's most prominent strategy was buying significant cable television assets. After acquiring John Malone's TCI and Media One (gaining through the latter a 25% share of Time Warner Cable ), AT&T was the largest provider of cable television in the United States. It intended to use these assets to bridge the so-called " last mile" and break the Regional Bell Companies' access-monopoly of the consumer household for data and telephony services, but the wager was costly, substantially increasing the company's debt.

In 1998, AT&T announced a US$1 billion alliance with BT to offer global voice over IP (VoIP) services—sparking rumors of a potential merger.[1] The parties could not even agree on the alliance's name, however, and fought for control of the project. By mid- 2001, customers were being directed to sign contracts with the parent companies, and Concert, as the venture was eventually known, was scrapped in October of that year.

With long-distance rates falling and the market for telecommunications services overall weakening, AT&T could not sustain the debt it had incurred in these ventures. Moreover, the cost of upgrading TCI's equipment to handle two-way communications proved far higher than pre-merger estimates. AT&T undertook a major reorganization in October 2000, moving its mobile phone and broadband units into separate companies, to allow each unit to raise capital independently.

On July 9, 2001 it spun off AT&T Wireless Corp. in what was then the world's largest initial public offering (IPO). Later that year it spun off AT&T Broadband and Liberty Media, which comprised its cable TV assets. AT&T Broadband was subsequently acquired by Comcast Communications Corporation in 2002, and AT&T Wireless merged with Cingular Wireless in 2004.

In 2004 AT&T began its latest strategy, focusing on VoIP services under the brand name CallVantage.