An independent telephone company was a telephone company providing local service in the United States or Canada that was not part of the Bell System organized by American Telephone and Telegraph. Independent telephone companies usually operated in many rural or sparsely populated areas.
The second fundamental Bell patent for telephones expired on 30 January 1894, which provided an opportunity for independent companies to provide telephone services, although some had been established before that date. The Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange company had been formed on 30 October 1891. The first Strowger switch went into operation on 3 November 1892 in LaPorte, Indiana, with 75 subscribers and capacity for 99. Independent manufacturing companies were established, such as Stromberg-Carlson in 1894 and Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company in 1897.
By 1903 while the Bell system had 1,278,000 subscribers on 1514 main exchanges, the independents, excluding non-profit rural cooperatives, claimed about 2 million subscribers on 6150 exchanges.
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 or TSP) that provides telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many telephone companies were at one time government agencies or privately owned but state-regulated monopolies. The government agencies are often referred to, primarily in Europe, as PTTs (postal, telegraph and telephone services).
Telephone companies are common carriers, and in the United States are also called local exchange carriers. With the advent of mobile telephony, telephone companies now include wireless carriers, or mobile network operators.
Most telephone companies now also function as internet service providers (ISPs), and the distinction between a telephone company and an ISP may disappear completely over time, as the current trend for supplier convergence in the industry continues.