While reading some industry news recently, I was reminded of how much telecommunications has changed in the more than 53 years since I joined General Telephone Company of Pennsylvania, fresh out of college.
Having grown up with an eight-party line in Bell Telephone territory, I had no comprehension that Independent Telephone Companies even existed. I didn’t know that General Telephone had service in such places as Erie, York and Johnstown, PA, Tampa Bay, Florida, or Long Beach, California. Or that Central Telephone operated Las Vegas, or that thousands of other Independents controlled many cities and towns across more than 50% of the geographical area in U.S.
Back then, Bell and other telcos had such monopoly power that their customers could not even put a cover on their phone books. Our “computer” at GTE in Erie was a huge room full of tubes where, if you could write in COBOL, you might create a program that could produce something that was slightly faster and smarter than an adding–or stenograph–machine.
Broadband and the internet were concepts that existed mostly in the imagination of science fiction writers or mad scientists who imagined a world that seemed far beyond the reach of us mere mortals.
Today though, in this post-divestiture and technology-driven internet world of instant information and communications, we are faced with choices, problems, and decisions that could never have been contemplated in my early industry years.
AT ICORE, WE CAN ASSIST YOU WITH THE MANY CHALLENGES OF TODAY’S TELECOMMUNICATIONS ENVIRONMENT.
