New York City was one of the first major U.S. cities to get telephone service. This was driven by its booming population and rapid infrastructure development. Soon, phones became essential for efficient business and a comfortable modern life. This new service was provided by a company that would later become Verizon. Here’s how it served customers and built a huge telephone network in New York on new-york-future.
A Brief History of Verizon’s Emergence and Growth
The first telephone company in New York was founded as a franchise in 1876. Its leaders were American industrialist Charles A. Cheever and engineer Hilborne Roosevelt. The company was created to provide telephone access to office and business employees, thereby boosting their efficiency.
The company leased telephone sets to users, who were responsible for providing the wires to connect them from their business or office. In the 18th century, telegraphs already existed in New York for this purpose. They helped save a lot of money by avoiding the need to hire a private telegraph operator to manually handle communications.
In 1920, the company that would become Verizon began expanding its operations by building a new factory for telephone equipment. New cable channels provided better service to customers. They converged at 20 wire centers, which were connected by larger trunk cable channels located in the eastern and western parts of Manhattan.
At each wire center, a new office building was constructed to house telephone communicators, panel switches, and other equipment necessary for service. The largest of these locations in New York was the company’s corporate headquarters, located on West Street in the Lower West Side.
These wire centers were eventually placed in all boroughs of the city, as well as the suburbs. Suburban telephone services expanded significantly, thanks in part to open-wire lines and Strowger switches.
The Service Crisis and Recovery from the Largest U.S. Phone Outage
Providing mobile service turned out to be a profitable new business that grew rapidly in New York from the beginning of the 19th century. However, as it turned out, the company’s founders and representatives of other financial corporations had underestimated the demand for phone usage. In the late 1960s, this led to a shortage of mobile signal transmission capacity in Manhattan. As a result, customers had to wait for weeks just to get a phone line. In addition to the capacity deficit, there weren’t enough cables to lay to office buildings. Soon, protests broke out on the streets of New York. The lack of phone service made it impossible to continue working effectively.
The most effective solution to this problem was for Verizon’s management to hire and professionally train thousands of new employees. They also purchased new equipment to help their new staff do the job.
Construction also began on new underground communications to expand New York’s telephone network and serve more customers. This was achieved by installing twin Anaconda Carrier amplification systems, which allowed multiple phone signals to be transmitted simultaneously. In addition, Bell Labs increased the capacity of its new telecommunication systems and fixed software bugs. As a result, a new mobile communications center was established in the city at 1095 Avenue of the Americas, which reduced the load on four other centers in the Manhattan area. The company was also given a new telephone headquarters.