Communication was once limited to the people who were in the house with you, or passersby that you would shout out to from your front porch. If you had to relay a message to Aunt Sue in Kalamazoo, you took quill pen in hand, wrote a missive on fine vellum paper and then sent it and waited, waited, waited. Weeks, or even months later, Aunt Sue would respond to your original letter and the whole process would begin again.

 

Telegraphy And Telephony

 

To speed things up, those who could afford it could send a telegram, but there were problems with those as well. For one thing, they could be pricey for the financially strapped families, and if they lived way out in the woods, they would not get their message until they came to town or a messenger finally managed to find them.

 

Progress in communication brought the telephone, and suddenly you could hear the voice on the other end of a whole lot of wire and actually talk to them. But, the telephone brought with it a whole slew of new issues to confront. The phone was thought of as frivolous, and a passing fancy by many, and there was no service available to the rural and remote areas of the country. Phones were found in bustling centers of town, and were a community thing- not convenient to pick up and chit chat about the weather.

 

The Telephone Network

 

Back in the old days of the phone company, all calls were connected by a living, breathing phone operator who sat in front of a dazzling display of flashing buttons and lights, connecting one call to another with a virtual tangle of wires. As more and more people signed up for phone service, the phone company found that the operator was not as effective- they just could not keep the switchboards moving fast enough. An automated system for connecting and disconnecting thousands upon thousand of phone calls was invented, and the phone company sat back on its heels, raking in money hand over fist. People were wrapped in their clutches, with no escape route in sight.

 

The telephone company’s network is made up of circuits. Those circuits are open until a call is made, and then closed while in use. During a call, those circuits cannot be used by any other caller, leaving the phone company no choice but to continually add new circuits to keep up with the demand. The more circuits that are needed, the more work the phone company must do to keep them up and running properly, which is more expense for them. Exactly who do you think gets to bear the cost of that additional expense? That’s right, the phone company’s customers.

 

Computer And Mobile Phones

 

After a few years, the naysayers realized that the phone was not just a passing fancy, and more and more people started having their own phone installed in the home. Soon, the phone was not only in the majority of homes, many people had more than one phone. But, communication needs still continued to involve and technology continued to grow right along with it. The world soon had the computer and the mobile phone to complement the telephone, and in some cases, replace it. How many people do you know personally that has a cell phone only? The telephone served us all well, but it is now taking a backseat to the other members of the communications team as email, IM and voice over Internet explode onto the scene.

 

When computers were first developed for personal use, they were huge and bulky affairs and moved so slow they hardly seemed worth it to all but the most techno-crazed fan. As the machines grew smaller, sleeker and faster, their ability to communicate with each other grew. Soon people were emailing and instant messaging each other at the speed of light and loving it. Why bother using an expensive phone call to ask a simple question when you could zip off a quick email and be done with it?

 

But, the computer was not the only innovation that threatened to knock King Telephone off of his communication throne, and the cellular phone was among the first to chip away at the hold the phone company had on its customers.