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A HISTORY OF THE "TELEPHONE COMPANY" IN HAWAII
 | PART 1.
In earlly 1878, Maui's Charles H. Dickey installed Hawai'i's first
two telephones between his home and his store. The phones were
rented from a Mainland firm and ran on wet cell batteries.On
December 23, 1880, a charter was granted to the Hawaiian Bell
Telephone Company.
(Bell had nothing to do with the company. The name "Bell" was added
to honor Alexander Graham Bell.) The primary investor was the Orient
Bell Telephone Company of London and the first order was for 50
phones from a Belgium manufacturer. |
| PART 2.
For most of 1900 transmitting/receiving stations were set up, but
failed for the most part. The Marconi techies were sent back to the
Mainland and Marconi sent an "expert" to solve the problem. He did.
He used Ben Franklin's kite experiment and found the right locations
for the stations. Service was spotty and Wireless Telegraph ran into
debt. The "expert" bought the judgments for $600. and got local
businessmen and sugar planters to put up $1,000. a month to continue
attempts to get reliable service. |
| PART 3.
The first strike against Mutual was called by the IBEW, beginning on
May 3, 1920. Approximately 75 of Mutual's employees were union
members, including 60 linemen.
During negotiations before the Public Utilities Commission, Mutual
surprised everyone by voluntarily offering a general wage increase
totaling $87,000 a year if the PUC would approve it. |
| PART 4.
The Great Depression had begun in October 1929 and by late 1931 was
beginning to bite at Mutual's business. During late 1931, 180 small
businesses disconnected their phone service but a whopping 823
residence subscribers cancelled. In the country districts, six
percent cancelled along with the nine percent on the city side. |
| PART 5.
Some of these wait-listed folks had been on the list for up to four
years. But even though had laid 12,500 miles of cable in 1945, it
still had problems getting copper and lead, as government
restrictions had not been lifted. It took over six months from
War's-end to get 200 lines installed. From that point in March 1946,
500 went hot in May, 800 in June, etc. By the end of 1940, 3,800 new
lines were installed. 1946 began with 978 employees, double that of
1940. The payroll went from 1940's over $1 million to $2.25 million. |
| PART 6.
In August, 1959, Statehood became reality after decades of attempts.
At Hawaiian Telephone--the new name for Mutual Telephone--growth was
spurred by the Territory's new status.
By the end of 1960, Hawaiian Telephone had 200,000 lines installed.
These customers now had dial service assistance and toll-free
dialing on all islands was operational. This feat made the Island of
Hawaii the single largest toll-free calling area in the United
States. |
| PART 7. This
installment begins with the end of the company's first century and
beginning of it second in 1983. This benchmark was also the start of an
upheaval in the telecommunications industry unprecedented in the entire
history since Watson answered Bell's hail. This new era
exploded the sedentary legacy phone company attitudes nationwide with a
whole new vocabulary of technology and business concepts. |
| PART 8.
In 1989, after 105 years of service, Hawaiian Tel went modern by
leasing an IBM 3090-200E mainframe computer to handle its accounting
"chores". The company would not disclose the cost of the lease. |
| PART 9.
1991 saw HawTel finishing its 1990
fiscal year ending with $539.3 million in gross income and $52.0 million
in profit. The company paid its parent--GTE Corp.--a record $$43.5
million in dividends. |
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