A postal, telegraph, and telephone (or PTT) is or was a government agency responsible for postal mail, telegraph, and telephone services in many countries worldwide other than North America and Japan. In some countries, the former government-monopoly PTT has been partially or completely privatized in recent years. In some of those privitizations, the PTT was renamed completely, whereas in others, the name of the privatized corporation has been only slightly modified, such as PT Telecom in Indonesia. An agency is a department of a local or national government responsible for the oversight and administration of a specific function, such as a customs agency or a space agency. ... A British pillar box The postal system is a system by which written documents typically enclosed in envelopes, and also small packages containing other matter, are delivered to destinations around the world. ... Telegraphy (from the Greek words tele = far away and grapho = write) is the long distance transmission of written messages without physical transport of letters, originally over wire. ... Jump to: navigation, search A telephone handset A touch-tone telephone dial Telephone Complex relay used in a telephone switching system. ... Jump to: navigation, search In economics, a monopoly (from the Greek monos, one + polein, to sell) is defined as a persistent market situation where there is only one provider of a kind of product or service. ...

PTT-based countries

In countries that had a PTT unit of government, typical the vast majority of forms of distribution of information fell under the auspices of the PTT, whether that be the delivery of printed publications and individual letters in the postal mail, the transmission of telephonic audio, or the transmission of telegraphic on-off signals, and in some countries, the broadcast of one-way (audio) radio and (audio-video) television signals. In many countries with a current or former PTT, the PTT also was responsible for the manufacture and standardization of telephone equipment. Often the presence of a single PTT in a country implied a single monolithic approach to the distribution of information in that country, which as an advantage permitted efficient deployment of a single national standard for each topic instead of on-going debate about competing ideas, but which as a disadvantage typically stifled alternative ideas from emerging once a legacy implementation had been widely deployed.

Bell System countries

Under an entirely different school of thought, in countries that were under the influence of the Bell System, the concept of a government-permitted private-corporation monopoly existed since the 19th century. Such countries that were part of or under the influence of the Bell System, include the USA, Canada, Japan, and various Carribean islands. In each of these countries, the telephone monopoly and telegraph monopoly were separate from the government postal mail. In the USA and Canada, the telephone monopoly was the companies affiliated under the Bell System brand, named after Alexander Graham Bell in the USA and his father Alexander Melville Bell in Canada, whereas the government-permitted telegraph monopoly was Western Union. In the USA, the broadcast of radio and television signals never was tantamount to a monopoly but rather was, at the network level, an oligopoly that has been regulated by the FCC since their inception. Prior to the 1984 break-up of the Bell System, the manufacture and standardization of telephone equipment was largely performed by the then Western Electric now Lucent (and its affiliates the then Northern Electric now Nortel and the then Nippon Electric now NEC). Without a single authoritative government body enacting a single vision nationwide, a non-PTT approach to information exchange inevitably led to multiple companies and multiple companies inevitably led to increased political pressure for breaking up and fully deregulating the government-permitted monolopy to permit increased competition. This pursuit of this increased competition among multiple non-PTT corporations in the former Bell System countries contributed to the interest in privatizing the PTTs in PTT-based countries worldwide. Jump to: navigation, search Bell System trademark used by AT&T and affiliated companies from 1921 to 1939 The Bell System was a trademark and service mark used by the US telecommunications company American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) and its affiliated companies to co-brand their extensive circuit-switched... The Caribbean or the West Indies is a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea. ... Jump to: navigation, search Bell System trademark used by AT&T and affiliated companies from 1921 to 1939 The Bell System was a trademark and service mark used by the US telecommunications company American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) and its affiliated companies to co-brand their extensive circuit-switched... Jump to: navigation, search Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a scientist, inventor, founder of Bell Canada, and was formerly credited as father of the telephone. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Western Union is an American financial services and communications company. ... Jump to: navigation, search An oligopoly is market form in which a market is dominated by a small number of sellers (oligopolists). ... The FCCs official seal. ... Jump to: navigation, search Western Electric (sometimes abbreviated WECo) was a US electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995 . ... In 1996, AT&T spun off its Systems and Technology units, along with the famous Bell Laboratories, to form a new company named Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU). ... Northern Telecommunications Networks, commonly known as Nortel, is a telecommunications equipment manufacturer headquartered in Canada. ... Northern Telecommunications Networks, commonly known as Nortel, is a telecommunications equipment manufacturer headquartered in Canada. ... Jump to: navigation, search NEC Corporation (Jp. ... Jump to: navigation, search NEC Corporation (Jp. ...