At one time AT&T and Ma Bell had all the phone service?
151440
Due to antitrust restrictions, it's unlikely there will be a single, national local and long distance provider owning all the phone lines into homes and businesses nationwide.  It is possible there will be at least a few more mergers nationwide among local and long distance companies, and possibly cable companies, resulting in 3 or 4 large national teleconm companies, with many very small companies competing for small shares of business.
979667
On March 10, 1876, in Boston, Massachusetts, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Thomas Watson fashioned the device itself; a crude thing made of a wooden stand, a funnel, a cup of acid, and some copper wire. But these simple parts and the equally simple first telephone call -- "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you!" -- belie a complicated past. Bell filed his application just hours before his competitor, Elisha Gray, filed notice to soon patent a telephone himself. What's more, though neither man had actually built a working telephone, Bell made his telephone operate three weeks later using ideas outlined in Gray's Notice of Invention, methods Bell did not propose in his own patent.
1103069
They called it Ma Bell.  At the beginning, it should have been bought by the government and made a Department in the Executive Branch.  I'm serious.  The Secretary of Communication.  Bell (or AT&T) did the best job in the history of communications.  But, ah, well, there was more money to be made by busting it up and spreading the business.  Are you a recipient of any of that money?  If not, just pay your $200+telephone/cable/internet bill and be happy.
809370
For government look at Education system. state or federal.\n\nFor coporation talk about the Bell-Atlantic phone companies.
1035378
I doubt you'll find any company willing to allocate the number to you without phone service, but you can try.\n\nFirst off, is the number in use?   Have you tried calling it?  If anyone answers, then you could try to buy it from the current owner.\n\nIf not, then call one of the companies that sell 800 service (AT&T, for example) and see if they're willing to do it.   You might be able to negotiate just to get the number reserved in a certain area (like a single state, or the northeast).  That might make it cheaper.\n\nA good place to ask questions about this is the newsgroup (go to google.com, click on Groups, and then enter the name:) comp.dcom.telecom     People who are active there know about this sort of thing.
152723
the answer to the joke was " it's a local call."\n\nBut that joke is no longer accurate as it now costs ".50 to make a local call from the payphones.
841853
It was all Bell that's for sure. If I recall the company was deemed a monopoly and forced to break up. Sherman Anti-trust?
179323
Uh, the phone company??????
728434
What kind of service are you talking about?
212952
are you seriously asking us to identify the top one thousand companies in dallas that use wireless phones?\n\ncome on!\n\nyou must be a wireless business consultant.
314047
Call Alltel and ask them?
593029
He called Watson. Alexander Graham Bell and Watson invented the telephone.
510201
Until the 1960s, voice communications between North America and the other continents was possible - but expensive. Then AT&T Labs launched Echo, a giant, experimental balloon off of which messages could be bounced. Two years later Telstar was sent into orbit, the world's first active communications satellite.
122557
OK, I just saw this special on the history channel..."The History of Cell Phones"...I think his name was Howard Cooper...He worked at a phone company...i think he was the General Manager of Motorola...and his first call on a cell phone was to a rival phone company; AT&T...
15335
The new emergency number had to be three numbers that were not in use in the United States or Canada as the first three numbers of any phone number or area code, and the numbers had to be easy to use. The Federal Trade Commission along with AT&T (which held a monopoly on phone services at that time) originally announced the plans to build the first 911 system in Huntington, Indiana. Bob Gallagher, President of the Alabama Telephone, was annoyed that the independent phone industry had not been consulted. Gallagher decided to beat AT&T to the punch line and have the first 911 emergency service built in Haleyville, Alabama.  \nI got that from: http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl911.htm\nHere is more information: http://www.911dispatch.com/911/history/\n\nAs for the similarties, we do not know for sure, but it may have been that Bin Laden was trying to make a symbolic gesture by using the date 9/11.
349839
you answered your own question www.AT &T then go  equipment for sale
368158
Bellsouth?  Same thing happened to me.