WordNet
n. a public utility that provides telephone service [syn: telephone service, phone company, phone service, telco]
Wikipedia
A telephone company, also known as a telco, telephone service provider, or telecommunications operator, is a kind of communications service provider (CSP) (more precisely a telecommunications service provider or TSP) that provides telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many telephone companies were at one time government agencies or privately owned but state-regulated monopolies. The government agencies are often referred to, primarily in Europe, as PTTs ( postal, telegraph and telephone services).
Telephone companies are common carriers, and in the United States are also called local exchange carriers. With the advent of mobile telephony, telephone companies now include wireless carriers, or mobile network operators.
Most telephone companies now also function as internet service providers (ISPs), and the distinction between a telephone company and an ISP may disappear completely over time, as the current trend for supplier convergence in the industry continues.
Usage examples of "telephone company".
Most were written to the neighbourhood supermarket, utilities, telephone company.
Horses, however, not electronics, were our speciality, and Bobby said he would go out to a public box and ring up the telephone company and ask them to come themselves to see what they could find.
He finally hit paydirt: a man in a light-colored suit used that particular phone and the digital time on the tape put it within two minutes of what the telephone company said was the time of the call.
He had been a hard-working, steady-going man in his trade-electrician employed by a telephone company-and he and Cunningham had been friends since boyhood.
Morehouse, equipment engineer of the telephone company, and Edward Watson explained the Vernam system, together with some other possibilities, to a Lieutenant Griffiths.
The FBI and CIA hate each other, and they both hate the telephone company.
Then I'll introduce photostatic copies of the telephone company records.
When you get the right initials from the marriage license, check up with the telephone company and see if there's a telephone in his name.