Магистратура / Задания на зачёт / Задание 4 - сжатый пересказ text 1 Telephone Industry из книги Кожевниковой / Telephone Industry

Кожевникова. Английский язык. Text 1. History and regulation of telephone industry, стр. 191-194.

Alexander Graham Bell invented telephone after he had been experimenting with harmonic telegraph for years. Bell formed his own company on 9 July, 1877, it was called Bell Telephone Company and himself became the company’s electrician at 3000$ salary.

The basis patents were due to run out in 1893 and 1894 but by that time, Theodore Newton Vail had been brought in as general manager, and he decided to reorganize company to it success existence in a competitive environment, not monopoly, as before. He also said a very motivating phrase, which is now written in books. So, the first step in plan was obtaining a captive manufacturing facility, and this was accomplished in 1881 with the purchase of Western Electric Company. Second step was development of new territory, so Veil send his salesmen into the field to set up telephone exchanges in untouched territory.

Veil prepared the company very well for open competition. The expiration of Bell's basic patents was the starting signal for open competition. Independent telephone operating companies sprang up throughout the country;

Despite the fact that since then many new telecom operators had opened, long time telephones were not interconnected. And it was not unusual that one subscriber had to have two or three instruments to communicate with the total population of the city.

AT&T, became the official name of the company at the end of 1899.

By 1934 telecommunications had become so important to the country that Congress passed a Communications Act and created the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

On January 8,1982, the news broke; AT&T had agreed to break up its many billion empire. It was agreed that AT&T would divest the local parts of the Bell operating telephone companies. It would keep its manufacturing facilities and its long-distance network. The agreement would take effect on January 1, 1984.

The 22 regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) agreed to form 7 regional holding companies.