With six billion people on the planet today using some form of telephone, it is probably the most widely used piece of technology in the world.

The invention of the telephone is often attributed to Alexander Graham Bell, who in 1876 was the first to obtain a patent on a sound transmitting “apparatus.” But truth be told, many other inventors had been working on similar technologies ever since the 1830′s.

The same year that Bell got his patent on the telephone, a Hungarian engineer named Tivadar Pusks created the telephone switchboard, an essential component for the creation of a telephone network.

Over the first couple of decades, telephones were mostly sold in pairs to wealthy industrialists wanting to connect their residence with their business operations.

The first American telephone switchboard, connecting telephone owners through a network, was created in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1894. For the next half century, all long-distance phone-calls in America were routed through such switchboards, which primarily employed women.

In 1951, “area codes” were introduced for eleven cities across the United States, creating the ability to make automatic long-distance phone calls that bypassed the switchboards. Still in use today in or close to the same location, except for the one in San Francisco, these area codes were: 215 (Philadelphia), 216 (Cleveland), 312 (Chicago), 313 (Detroit), 318 (San Francisco), 401 (Providence), 412 (Pittsburgh), 414 (Milwaukee), 415 (Oakland), 617 (Boston), and 916 (Sacramento).

For the following four decades, the way that most of us used the telephone then remained unchanged. Technology behind the scenes improved. Signal transmission changed from analogue to digital, and automated switchboards were improved to be able to handle greater loads. But we pretty much picked up and used our telephones the same way. That is until the 1990′s, when mobile phone usage exploded and VoIP was invented.

VoIP – Voice over Internet Protocol

In 1995, the world saw a brand new way to transmit and make phone calls. This technology, invented by Alon Cohen and Lior Haramaty, was called VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and allowed for phone calls to be made through computers and transmitted via Internet connections.

Dozens of companies today offer VoIP telephone services at low cost compared to traditional landlines; two of the most successful being Vonage and Skype.

While extraordinarily price competitive, three disadvantages commonly mentioned with VoIP phone services are, 1) You cannot make emergency calls (911) through your VoIP service, 2) Your number will be unlisted, which may make you more difficult to find, 3) Your phone will not function when there’s a power outage.

Mobile Phones

Mobile phones experienced an explosion in popularity in the 1990′s, driven by lower cost and expanded networks. However, it may surprise you to know that the first successful mobile phone took place in 1946, from a car in St Louis, Missouri.

A decade later, an automatic mobile car phone was introduced in Sweden. Made up of vacuum tubes and relays, it weighed in at a monstrous 90 lbs.

The real mobile phone revolution in the U.S. began in the 1990′s. Prior to 1990, only one in seventy Americans had a mobile phone. A decade later, one in three Americans carried a cell phone. As of 2011, on average, every American uses a cell phone. In fact, there are more mobile phones in use in the U.S. then there are people.

In a world of 7 billion people, there are 5.9 billion mobile phone service subscriptions. That’s a full 85% of the world’s population – greater than the number of adults in the world. In comparison, there are “only” one and a quarter billion paid landline phone services in the world. The mobile phone revolution is over. It took two decades.

With a background as a translator, writer and book publisher, Kent J Davidsson now works in the utilities and communications industry. For quotes on communication services, including phone, Internet and television, please contact him and his team through e-mail contact@lower-utility-bills.us.