Development of the Telephone System

First System in Manitoba

The first telephone system in Manitoba was put together by Horace McDougall, of Winnipeg. A manager of the Northwest Telegraph Company, McDougall acquired two telephones in November 1877 and wired them between his office and his home. These two state-of-the-art instruments were rented for $60 per year[RB1.1][JB1.2] (about $1500 today) to operate and could only connect only to each other. These early devices did not even have the ability to ring as later telephones did.

Bell Telephone Company of Canada

In 1881 McDougall sold his network to the Bell Telephone Company of Canada. (Frank Walsh, who was a founding member of the Carleton Club, became the new local agent for Bell.) In order to connect the network of 26 subscribers, Bell had a switchboard brought by Red River cart and employed a young man to operate it during business hours. Despite the history of young men as operators in the telegraph days, they proved less than suitable as telephone operators. So, in 1882 Bell hired its first female operator, Ida Cates. Female operators rapidly took over the role and within ten years, all telephone operators were women. Insert Photo – Manitoba Telecommunications Heritage Showcase

Manitoba Government Telephones

In 1893 the Bell patent expired in Canada and a “gold rush, or perhaps a copper rush,” followed with hundreds of companies entering the business and offering telephone services. Cutthroat competition led to inefficiency and outright vandalism. So, in 1908 the Manitoba Government took over the Bell telephone operations under the newly created Manitoba Government Telephones (MGT). One of the first goals of the newly created crown corporation was to provide access to service to all Manitobans. This goal seemed achievable at the time as the province was physically relatively small, occupying only the southern portion of what is now Manitoba. However, in 1912 the task became a lot harder when Manitoba was enlarged to its current size of over one-quarter of a million square miles. Insert map or figure of reference postage stamp and larger size of province.

Accompanying the large increase in size was the increase in the cost of equipment needed to provide service to regions with lower population density. To this point, telephones were rented and the calls included for free. So, MGT then introduced the concept of “measured rate” whereby usage would be charged on a per call basis like a modern payphone. As the system expanded, so did the costs and MGT continued to lose money in spite of the new rates.

When the Great War broke out in 1914 and men went overseas to fight, MGT was hit with the dual troubles of higher labour costs and shortages of materials. Just when things started to look up following the war’s end, the 1919 General Strike caused the loss of much of the construction season.

Manitoba Telephone System

In the 1920s, the fortunes of MGT roared like the rest of the world and by 1929 the deficit accumulated during the early years had been eliminated. The company was renamed the Manitoba Telephone System (MTS) although the Manitoba Government Telephones name can still be seen today on some older buildings. Insert photo of old Manitoba Telephones Building However, October 1929 brought that boom to an end with the stock market crash. Also, at the end of October 1929, MTS was dealing with the effects of a massive ice storm that had brought down thousands of poles. The future seemed particularly bleak.

 Telephone wires were not originally run on telephone poles. They were strung directly from building to building. Telephone poles were not in common use until the 1890s.

 Telephone operators were the first to walk off the job during the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. They did not come to work for the 7:00 am shift on May 15 even though the strike did not officially start until 11:00 am

The 1930s saw significant losses, both financially and in the number of subscribers as MTS tried to maintain what had become an essential service in rural areas. There were still successes, though, with service extension to Northern Manitoba and the completion of the TransCanada Telephone System[JB2.1], which connected Canada from sea to sea.

First Emergency Call Number in Canada

The Second World War brought with it a renewal of shortages, of both people and materiel, but the post-war era saw technological progress return. Subscriber growth exploded. Between 1945 and 1955 the number of telephones installed doubled to over 200,000. In 1959, Winnipeg was the first city in North America to implement emergency calling using 999. (This was later changed to the now-familiar 911 in 1975.) Local calls could increasingly be dialled directly rather than using an operator and in 1965 this was extended to calls across North America.

First Rural Fibre Network in Canada

The 1970s saw the onset of the digital revolution in communications. Beginning with dial-up data modems operating at the astounding speed of 300 bits per second the “need for speed” drove the evolution of the network to ever-faster speeds and permanent data connections which were not dependent on squeezing data onto a network originally designed to carry voices. In 1979, Manitoba was the focus of Canada’s first rural fibre network experiment. One hundred and fifty rural homes and farms were connected to the communications network by optical fibre that could provide voice, data, radio and television simultaneously in this test of the viability of a communications network of the future based on glass fibre rather than copper cable. It was only in the next century that this technology saw common use in business, and still mostly in larger population centres. So, MTS was very much ahead of its time with this trial. To this time, voice had been the dominant form of communication and MTS very much the dominant communication provider. In the 1970s cable television operators such as Videon and Cablevision emerged, offering Community Antenna Television (CATV) service. This was a service which used a single antenna installation to pick up broadcast television which was then carried by coaxial cable to homes. The service was provided by stations that were far away and could not easily be received by the average home.

Evolution of the Communications Industry

This was also about the time that MTS was starting the migration from monopoly telephone company to competitive telecommunications carrier, while the cable television world was seeing similar developments. New companies such as Rogers Cable and Shaw Cable systems joined the industry. In this new era, all companies could supply telephone equipment, long-distance service, data, voice and television. Among the traditional telephone companies as well as the cable television companies a period of merger and acquisition took place that saw the smaller carriers bought up by larger players in their respective sectors. Over time distinctions among the various companies declined so that most carriers had voice, data and television services.

Sidebar: The original CKY radio station was started by Manitoba Telephone System as an experiment in 1923. It was purchased by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1948 and became CBW, now CBC Radio One Winnipeg. Sidebar: Due in part to rapidly shifting federal regulations, the Manitoba Telephone System carried the backbone traffic of some cable operators on their poles and underground cables for a time. Sidebar: Edward “Ted” Rogers, Sr. founded the Rogers Vacuum Tube Company where he developed a tube that would run on household current instead of expensive batteries.

Wireless Communications Era

The 1970s also saw the beginning of the wireless communications era. Until the late ’70s, mobile telephones called YJ Mobile sets were available for vehicles but were large, cumbersome devices that needed a car’s battery to power them. Insert photo of Wikimedia user Daderot/National Electronics Museum

These phones were unable to dial calls and still relied on a human operator to connect calls. Technological progress was very rapid, with frequencies going up and digital radios bringing down price, size and power requirements. MTS started the first dial mobile service in the late 1970s and early ’80s, but the cellular revolution was already underway. Equipment maker Motorola© made an early portable telephone, that could actually be carried and used, but these devices had no data or text capability, just voice. An alphabet soup of technologies came and many went just as quickly. TDMA, CDMA, UMTS, GSM, 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE and 5G systems brought text, data and even video to evermore modern Smartphones. Insert photo of dpa/Motorola There were several changes in Manitoba that came out of the breakup of the North American telephone monopoly. Many smaller companies also appeared to take advantage of new regulations allowing new companies to enter both the fixed wire-line business as well as cellular, long-distance and data transport. Other traditional telephone companies such as Bell and Telus also entered the Manitoba market hoping to make inroads into the former monopoly territory. MTS went through several changes in the 1980s and ’90s as the telecommunications regulatory landscape was evolving from the original wire-based telephone company to a much more diverse communications company.

Privatization of Manitoba Telephone System

Manitoba Telephone System was privatized in 1996, Videon Cable Television was sold to Shaw in 2001 and the Manitoba Telephone System was renamed Manitoba Telecom Services in 2004. Finally, in 2017, almost 100 years after selling its Manitoba Operations, Bell returned to Manitoba to purchase Manitoba Telecom once again.

Compiled by Alan Pollard, P. Eng. FEC