"From a booth set up in Grand Central Terminal, a person could talk to a friend in Chicago or Washington while also seeing them on a small video screen. The friend would also have to go to a special booth in those cities to take the call. The price for the novelty of a three-minute call was $16.
That would be equivalent to $121 in today’s money."
“I talked with one of your engineers nearly 20 years ago. He said something about waves. Said you needed something that would make the long-distance wires talk farther.”
That’s how our conversation begins between two men, one of them an engineer, in this 1940 film that looks back on AT&T’s first transcontinental phone line.
We recently wrote about the decline of international carrier traffic, which comes at the hands of “over-the-top” (OTT) communications services.
Here's a good one from the archives.
"America and Europe will soon be linked by the first trans-Atlantic telephone cables," reads this March 1954 article from Popular Mechanics.
With the TeleGeography Report hot off the press, it seems that there are more than a few good stories nestled in this year’s data.
First up is the curious discovery that 2015 marked a turning point in the market. It was the first time since the Great Depression that international carrier voice traffic declined.
Happy 2017, TeleGeographers. We're a few days into the new year and we're pleased to announce that the annual update to our TeleGeography Report is now live.
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