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Media Technologies: Class 8, Telephone

  1. The Cycle
    • Invention
    • Disruption
    • Consolidation: Monopoly
    • Division: Break Up
    • Reorganization
  2. The Cycle and Media
    • Telephone
    • Movies
    • Television
  3. Invention
    • Alexander Graham Bell
    • voice over telegraph
  4. Disruption
    • telegraph
    • vocal communication
    • no transcription necessary
    • broke Western Union's monopoly
  5. Consolidation
    • American Telephone and Telegraph
    • incorporated 1876
      • Gardiner Hubbard
      • Theodore Vail
    • long Distance
      • wires
      • exchanges
  6. Local Telephone
    • independent companies
    • Balkanized
    • interconnected by AT&T long wires
  7. Monopoly
    • Kingsbury Commitment (1913)
    • Theodore Vail returns
    • natural monopoly
    • anti-trust exemption
    • provided universal service
  8. Vertical Integrated
    • switches
    • exchanges
    • long wires
    • telephone equipment
  9. Federal Communications Act
    • passed 1934
    • Federal Communications Commission
    • regulated telephone as utility
    • affirmed common carrier principle
  10. Foreign Attachments
    • Hush a Phone
    • Carterphone
  11. Control over Innovation
    • microwave relay
      • ground
      • relay
      • 1960s
    • communications satellite
      • Telstar
      • 1962
    • Western Electric phones
      • design remained the same over 50 years
      • rotary dial
      • "you can have any color you want"
      • no foreign attachments
  12. Breakup
    • AT&T Breakup 1984
    • Ma Bell
    • Baby Bells
  13. Effects of Breakup
    • touchtone dialing
    • fax machines
    • answering machines
    • modems
    • local telephone monopolies
    • long-distance telephone competition
  14. Telecommunications Act
    • deregulated
    • signed 1996
    • integrated services to provide "competition"
      • local
      • long distance
      • video
      • mobile telephone
    • consolidation of baby bells
      • AT&T
      • Verizon
      • Qwest
  15. Mobile Telephone
    • consolidated industry
    • landline phone companies
    • dude, where's my disruption?