On this day in 1969, Edmonton's city-owned telephone company was defending itself in a newspaper.
One of Edmonton Telephone's managers penned a rebuttal to an earlier letter to the editor, in which the writer complained about the service. What may seem like needless ink spilled over a customer complaint highlights how essential the telephone was in 1969, before text and email, as well as the city's long history as a telecom provider.
Edmonton's first telephone company was founded in 1893 by businessman Alex Taylor. By 1904, the city had grown and Taylor's company ran telephone service to Edmonton, St. Albert, Fort Saskatchewan, and other nearby towns. There were 500 telephone owners in Edmonton at that time, and the demand was becoming more than Taylor's business could handle. So, he sold the operation to the city for around $17,000. It became the Edmonton District Telephone Company, but would eventually be known as Edmonton Telephones, or in most conversations as ED TEL.
Edmonton was one of many cities in Canada that owned its telephone services. But its service was also one of the most successful. As the city continued to grow, so did ED TEL. In 1906, the organization built its first automatic telephone exchange downtown, a system that was cutting-edge technology at the time. And as the city spread outwards over the next few decades, more exchanges were built.
Eventually, one in every five people in Edmonton had a telephone, the highest rate of any city in Canada. ED TEL was so successful, in fact, that it continued to make a profit even during the Great Depression, despite offering lower rates than the province-owned Alberta Government Telephones, which served Calgary and the rest of the province.
The two Alberta telcos had a rocky relationship. For most of their history, the two companies fought over which would receive the fee for long-distance calls made from Edmonton to other parts of Alberta — ED TEL argued they were entitled to more of the fee since the calls used their lines. The 1970s saw a protracted "telephone war" between the two over territory. ED TEL demanded the right to take over service for communities such as Jasper Place, which Edmonton had annexed but remained AGT customers. Eventually, that dispute was settled, with Edmonton taking over any new areas of the city.
Given its sometimes adversarial relationship, there is irony in the way the ED TEL and AGT stories end at the same place. In 1990, the provincial government formed a holding company called TELUS to privatize AGT. Five years later, that company purchased ED TEL.
The municipal and provincial governments are no longer in the phone business, but phones still become a government matter on occasion. This fall, Alberta became one of many provinces to introduce restrictions on students using cellphones at school. So far, Edmonton schools have reported few challenges in meeting the province's new rules.
This clipping was found on Vintage Edmonton, a daily look at Edmonton's history from armchair archivist @revRecluse of @VintageEdmonton.