telecommunications company

{{Short description|Organization that provides telephone and/or other telecommunications services}}

{{Merge from|Telecommunications service|discuss=Talk:Telecommunications company#Proposed merge of Telecommunications service into Telecommunications company|date=November 2024}}

File:Bell Edison Telephone Building.jpg building of 1896 in Birmingham, England]]

A telecommunications company{{efn|Abbreviated as telco. Alternative names include telephone service provider,[http://www.fcc.gov/guides/portability-keeping-your-phone-number-when-changing-service-providers Operability: Keeping Your Telephone Number When You Change Service Provider]. FCC.gov. Retrieved on 2013-09-18. telephone company or telecommunications operator.}} is a kind of electronic communications service provider, more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many traditional solely telephone companies now function as internet service providers (ISPs), and the distinction between a telephone company and ISP has tended to disappear completely over time, as the current trend for supplier convergence in the industry develops.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=13BYDd8v-DUC|title=Policy-Making and Diversity in Europe: Escape from Deadlock|last1=Héritier|first1=Adrienne|last2=Windhoff-Héritier|first2=Adrienne|date=1999-11-28|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=9780521653848|language=en}} Additionally, with advances in technology development, other traditional separate industries such as cable television, Voice-over IP (VoIP), and satellite providers offer similar competing features as the telephone companies to both residential and businesses leading to further evolution of corporate identity have taken shape.

Due to the nature of capital expenditure involved in the past, most telecommunications companies were government owned agencies or privately-owned monopolies operated in most countries under close state-regulations. But today there are many private players in most regions of the world, and even most of the government owned companies have been opened up to competition in-line with World Trade Organization (WTO) policy agenda. Historically these government agencies were often referred to, primarily in Europe, as PTTs (postal, telegraph and telephone services).{{Cite journal|last=Sandholtz|first=Wayne|date=1993-01-01|title=Institutions and Collective Action: The New Telecommunications in Western Europe|journal=World Politics|volume=45|issue=2|pages=242–270|doi=10.2307/2950659|jstor=2950659|issn=1086-3338}} Telecommunications companies are common carriers, and in the United States are also known as local exchange carriers. With the advent of mobile telephony, telecommunications companies now include wireless carriers, or mobile network operators and even satellite providers (Iridium).

Over time software companies have also evolved to provide telephone services over the Internet.