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The Pacific Bell Telephone Company (Pacific Bell or Pac Bell) is a
telephone company A telephone company, also known as a telco, telephone service provider, or telecommunications operator, is a kind of communications service provider (CSP), more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunicat ...
that provides telephone service in California. The company is owned by
AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...
through
AT&T Teleholdings AT&T Teleholdings, Inc., formerly known as Ameritech Corporation (and before that American Information Technologies Corporation), is an American telecommunications company that arose out of the 1984 AT&T divestiture. Ameritech was one of the sev ...
, and, though separate, is now marketed as “AT&T”. The company has been known by a number of names during which its service area has changed. The formal name of the company from the 1910s through the 1984 Bell System divestiture was The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company. As of 2002, the name “Pacific Bell” is no longer used in marketing, Pacific Bell is still the holder of record for the infrastructure of cables and fiber through much of California.


History

The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, or "PacTel" for short, managed the
Bell System The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over one hund ...
's telephone operations in California. It grew by acquiring smaller telephone companies along the Pacific coast. It built and occupied San Francisco's Pacific Telephone Building on New Montgomery Street which has been described as a "monument to western progress and foresight".


San Francisco graft

During the San Francisco graft trials, the company was implicated in paying bribes to obtain an operations franchise in San Francisco. Theodore Halsey, a confidential political agent for the Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company, paid attorney
Abe Ruef Abraham Ruef (September 2, 1864 – February 29, 1936) was an American lawyer and politician. He gained notoriety as the corrupt political boss behind the administration of Mayor Eugene Schmitz of San Francisco during the period before and after ...
a
retainer Retainer may refer to: * Retainer (orthodontics), devices for teeth * RFA ''Retainer'' (A329), a ship * Retainers in early China, a social group in early China Employment * Retainer agreement, a contract in which an employer pays in advance for ...
of $1,250 a month for "advice" on municipal issues. Ruef was the
political boss In politics, a boss is a person who controls a faction or local branch of a political party. They do not necessarily hold public office themselves; most historical bosses did not, at least during the times of their greatest influence. Numerous off ...
behind S.F. Mayor
Eugene Schmitz Eugene Edward Schmitz (August 22, 1864 – November 20, 1928), often referenced as "Handsome Gene" Schmitz, was an American musician and politician, the 26th mayor of San Francisco (1902-7), who was in office during the 1906 San Francisco earthqu ...
. In 1906, San Francisco was one of the most promising places for investment in all of the United States. Many companies were vying for a piece of the money to be made. The city's supervisors had run on a platform that included the city acquiring its own telephone system which both Home Telephone Company and Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company wanted to prevent. The Home Telephone Company, financed by investors from Southern California and Ohio, was trying to wrest the telephone franchise held exclusively by Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company in Northern California. After the massive earthquake of 1906, the Home Telephone Company contributed $75,000 to a relief fund for the city, but asked that it be held until their franchise was approved. It was later revealed that the city's supervisors had received payoffs through Ruef from both the Home Telephone Company and Pacific States Telephone Co. Home Telephone paid 10 supervisors $3,500 each and seven supervisors $6,000 each (about $ to $ in ). Pacific States Telephone Co. paid 10 supervisors $5,000 each ($ today). After the graft prosecutions, E.F. Pillsbury, General Counsel for the telephone company, revealed that he had never heard of Ruef's employment, and would have objected to Ruef receiving compensation greater than his own $1,000 per month.


Growth

During the first part of the 20th century, Pacific Telephone & Telegraph, along with the rest of the Bell System, initially resisted automating its services, on the premise that their people could provide better service than machines. When it acquired competing providers, if the company provided automatic dial service, Bell removed the automatic equipment and replaced it with manual telephones and manual operator switchboards. The company soon realized its best manual systems were unable to keep up with the growing demand for telephone service. In the early 1920s, following the 1921 installation of the nation's first large
panel switch The Panel Machine Switching System is a type of automatic telephone exchange for urban service that was used in the Bell System in the United States for seven decades. The first semi-mechanical types of this design were installed in 1915 in Newark, ...
in Omaha, the Bell operating companies began to install automated switching equipment.


Southern California service

Los Angeles and San Francisco employed different approaches for adopting new automatic switching technology. The Los Angeles Telephone Co. had merged with the Sunset Telephone Co. of northern California in 1883. Sunset was subsequently acquired by Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. in 1906. Following the purchase by PacTel, the southern California company remained a separate operation and used the Sunset name. The Los Angeles area was also served by a competitor, The Home Telephone Co., which began offering automatic (dial) service in 1902. The Sunset Telephone Co. subscribers were able to make local and long-distance calls via the Bell System, but Home Telephone Co. customers could make only local calls to other Home customers. To reach both exchanges, businesses were required to pay for a line from each company. In 1916, under pressure from local politicians and subscribers, Sunset Telephone Co. agreed to acquire the Home Company's operations. The new entity was called The Southern California Telephone Co. The two companies' operations were fully integrated in 1918. At the time of the 1918 merger, Home had 60,000 customers served from 16 dial offices. Sunset had 68,000 subscribers served from nine manual offices. Home's operations were sizable and the public felt Home provided better service than Sunset, so Pacific Telephone didn't convert the dial offices to manual as it had in the past. Instead, they took the highly unusual step of adding a dial and trunk lines to every manual switchboard position. In this way, former Sunset customers could reach the former Home subscribers via their central office operator. The last Los Angeles manual exchange was Thornwall 6, in Burbank, which operated until the late 1950s. The last manual office in southern California was in
Avalon Avalon (; la, Insula Avallonis; cy, Ynys Afallon, Ynys Afallach; kw, Enys Avalow; literally meaning "the isle of fruit r appletrees"; also written ''Avallon'' or ''Avilion'' among various other spellings) is a mythical island featured in th ...
, on Catalina Island, dating from a radiotelephone service installed in the early 1920s. Pacific Telephone later laid two submarine cables to link the island to the mainland. Avalon was converted to dial in 1978, using switching equipment 23 miles away in the San Pedro central office.


Northern California operations

San Francisco continued to install manual offices throughout the 1920s. When PacTel took over the operations of its San Francisco and Oakland competitor, Home Telephone Co., in the early 1920s, their customers were switched from Home's dial service to Pacific Telephone manual exchanges. A 1927 Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. publication proudly describes the company's newest manual offices, without a word of plans to introduce dial service. San Francisco's first dial office, ORdway, opened on 23 March 1929. The first suburban
step-by-step Step by Step may refer to: Film and television * ''Step by Step'' (1946 film), an American film directed by Phil Rosen * ''Step by Step'' (2002 film), a Belgian film directed by Philippe Blasband * ''Step by Step'' (TV series), a 1990s Americ ...
(electromechanical
stepping switch In electrical control engineering, a stepping switch or stepping relay, also known as a uniselector, is an electromechanical device that switches an input signal path to one of several possible output paths, directed by a train of electrical pulse ...
) office opened in Palo Alto in 1929.


Dial service conversion

Telephone service conversion from manual to dial systems was slowed by equipment shortages during World War II. San Jose had been planned for conversion before the war, but remained on manual service until 1949. In preparation for Operator Toll Dialing, the precursor to customer DDD (
Direct Distance Dialling Direct distance dialing (DDD) is a telecommunication service feature in North America by which a caller may, without operator assistance, call any other user outside the local calling area. Direct dialing by subscribers typically requires extra d ...
), cities throughout the country converted telephone numbers to a standardized 2L-5N format, e.g. EXchange . San Francisco completed its conversion in December 1947. In July 1948, Pacific Telephone converted most of the cities on the San Francisco Peninsula. The company announcement, “most Peninsula cities now have exchange names” confirmed that the old four- or five-digit numbers had been converted to the seven-digit exchange format. * DAvenport 2 - Palo Alto * OXford - Millbrae * DIamond 3 & 4 - Burlingame, San Mateo * FIreside 5 - San Mateo * EMerson 6 - Redwood City Manual numbers were still used in some peninsula cities and were listed in the directory without the first two letters of the name capitalized, indicating a non-dialable point requiring operator assistance to reach. For example: * Belmont 120 * San Carlos 932-J * Pescadero 2349-R * Half Moon Bay 3497 * San Gregorio 2 To place calls to certain other Northern California exchanges, such as Sacramento, Stockton, and Vallejo in Northern California, dial customers would dial "0" to reach an operator. The operator dialed through a
tandem switch A class-4, or tandem, telephone switch is a U.S. telephone company central office telephone exchange used to interconnect local exchange carrier offices for long distance communications in the public switched telephone network. A class-4 swit ...
and directly called numbers in those cities. These calls were indicated by a star in the telephone directory. For other call destinations, customers dialed ‘’211’’ to reach a long-distance operator, who would connect the customer using manual trunks to reach a distant operator. When Pacific Telephone converted its San Francisco operations to 2L-5N calling in 1947, the old central office names were kept in most cases, with an extra digit appended. Certain exchanges were abandoned after being converted from manual service, such as WEst, RAndolph, and the famous CHina exchange of Chinatown. The manual 25th Street office in San Francisco, serving the MIssion, ATwater, and VAlencia exchanges, was converted by Pacific to dial in 1952. On September 6, 1953, JUniper 6, previously known as RAndolph in the 2L-4N era, the last manual office within the City and County, cut over its 2700 subscribers to crossbar equipment in the new Juniper central office on Onondaga Avenue. Riverside maintained a large manual office until 1956. Berkeley converted AShberry 3, its last manual office, to dial in 1963. Crockett, the final Bay Area manual office, was converted to dial in 1969.


Northwest acquisitions

Acquisitions over the years extended Pacific Telephone's territory into
Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. ...
,
Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
, and northern
Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyomi ...
. Those operations were split off on July 1, 1961 to form Pacific Northwest Bell. In the 1980s, Pacific Telephone's assets were valued at $14.5 billion, making it the largest of any of the 21 wholly owned Baby Bells owned by AT&T, which also made Pacific Telephone the "crown jewel" of the operating companies. However, Pacific Telephone was one of the least profitable Bells due to very tough local telephone regulations in California.


Separation from AT&T

Prior to the AT&T breakup in 1984, AT&T held 89.8% of Pacific Telephone. After the breakup, The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company changed its name to Pacific Bell Telephone Company, or PacBell for short.
Pacific Telesis Pacific Telesis Group was one of the seven Regional Bell Operating Companies, sometimes also referred to as "RBOCs" or "Baby Bells", created in 1983 in preparation of the breakup of AT&T as a holding company for Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell, Pacif ...
was formed as a holding company for PacBell's interests, with PacBell and
Nevada Bell Nevada Bell Telephone Company, originally Bell Telephone Company of Nevada, is a Nevada telephone provider and it was the Bell System's telephone provider in Nevada. It only provides telephone services to 30% of the state, essentially all of the ...
(which PacBell had owned since 1913) as its operating companies. Since Nevada Bell had long been a PacBell subsidiary, that company was omitted from the
Modification of Final Judgment In United States telecommunication law, the Modification of Final Judgment (MFJ) is the August 1982 consent decree concerning the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) and its subsidiaries. The terms required the Bell System divestiture &n ...
that broke up the Bell System.


Mergers and subsequent growth

In 1997, Pacific Telesis Group was acquired by
SBC Communications The history of AT&T dates back to the invention of the telephone. The Bell Telephone Company was established in 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell, who obtained the first US patent for the telephone, and his father-in-law, Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Bell ...
, and although the
Pacific Telesis Pacific Telesis Group was one of the seven Regional Bell Operating Companies, sometimes also referred to as "RBOCs" or "Baby Bells", created in 1983 in preparation of the breakup of AT&T as a holding company for Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell, Pacif ...
corporate name disappeared fairly quickly, SBC continued to operate the local telephone companies separately under their original names. In September 2001, SBC rebranded the telephone company "SBC Pacific Bell". In late 2002, the companies were rebranded again as "SBC". Meanwhile, employees of SBC working in California who support SBC's non-regulated services and/or services provided both within and outside California were transferred to other SBC subsidiaries, like "Pacific Telesis Shared Services" and "SBC Operations, Inc." However, for legal and regulatory purposes, employees supporting local regulated services were still employed by "Pacific Bell Telephone Company dba SBC California ("SBC California")" which is the SBC subsidiary that provides regulated local exchange carrier telephone services within the franchise territory in California. On November 18, 2005, SBC completed its acquisition of AT&T Corp. to form AT&T Inc. Pacific Bell is now known as "Pacific Bell Telephone Company", dba AT&T California. In 2006, the company's direct parent, originally
Ameritech AT&T Teleholdings, Inc., formerly known as Ameritech Corporation (and before that American Information Technologies Corporation), is an American telecommunications company that arose out of the 1984 AT&T divestiture. Ameritech was one of the se ...
, became
AT&T Teleholdings AT&T Teleholdings, Inc., formerly known as Ameritech Corporation (and before that American Information Technologies Corporation), is an American telecommunications company that arose out of the 1984 AT&T divestiture. Ameritech was one of the sev ...
due to an internal reorganization at AT&T. Its former direct parent, Pacific Telesis Group, was legally merged into AT&T Teleholdings. In 2007, local telephone service in California was further deregulated, resulting in price increases for AT&T California customers.Temple, James
"AT&T rates skyrocket since deregulation"
''San Francisco Chronicle'', 2013-01-18. Retrieved 2018-04-17.


See also

*
List of United States telephone companies This is a list of United States telephone companies. Regional Bell Operating Companies The Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) are the result of the break-up of the Bell System in 1984. After numerous mergers, asset sales, and renamings s ...
* Pacific Bell Telephone Co. v. linkLine Communications, Inc. * Pacific Bell Wireless * Pacific Bell Directory * Pacific Northwest Bell *
Regional Bell Operating Company The Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC) are the result of '' United States v. AT&T'', the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust suit against the former American Telephone & Telegraph Company (later known as AT&T Corp.). On January 8, 19 ...


References


External links


Pacific Bell official website
{{Authority control AT&T subsidiaries Bell System Communications in California Companies based in San Francisco Financial District, San Francisco Defunct telecommunications companies of the United States Telecommunications companies established in 1906 American companies established in 1906