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# While Most Countries Put Telephones Inside the Post Office, America Tried That One Year
- URL: https://broadbandbreakfast.com/while-most-countries-put-telephones-inside-the-post-office-america-tried-that-one-year/
- Published: 2026-09-09T20:06:02.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-09T20:07:46.000Z
- Description: Britain held its network 114 years. America's experiment lasted twelve months, ending August 1919.
- Author: Broadband Breakfast
- Tags: Telecom 150, Great Britain, Albert Burleson, Samuel Morse, Cave Johnson, U.S. Post Office Department, Woodrow Wilson, Attorney-General v. Edison Telephone Company of London, #with-siderail, #no-flux

*This article summarizes several of the key points in* [*Lesson 3: In Other Countries, PTTs (Posts, Telegraph and Telephone)*](https://broadbandbreakfast.com/lesson-2-differences-between-the-telephone-and-the-telegraph/)*, which is part of Broadband Breakfast's online course, "*[*150 Years of American Telecommunications*](https://chat.broadbandbreakfast.com/c/section-a-of-150-years-of-telecommunications?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com)*." A new lesson will be released every Monday.*

For most of the twentieth century, being on the telephone in Europe meant being a customer of the government. A single state agency, [the post, telegraph, and telephone ministry](https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty%5Fscholarship/3546/?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com), ran mail, telegraph, and phone service together across most of the continent. In the United States it meant being a customer of a private company the government regulated.

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The split started with the telegraph, and both post offices had one first. The U.S. Post Office Department ran the first American telegraph line for two years and leased it away in 1847\. Britain's Post Office bought its telegraph companies out in 1870 and kept the network in public ownership for the next 114 years.

### *The Post Office owned the first American telegraph*

The American half of that story begins with an appropriation.

Congress paid [$30,000 in 1843](https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/Electronic-Technology/Telegraph/?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com) for the first American telegraph line, from Washington to Baltimore, which **Samuel Morse** [put into operation in May 1844](https://www.si.edu/object/what-hath-god-wrought-telegraph-message%3Anmah%5F713485?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com). That line was transferred to the Post Office Department in 1845 and [opened to the public that April](https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/telegraph.pdf?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com) under [**Cave Johnson**](https://millercenter.org/president/polk/essays/johnson-1845-postmaster-general?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com), the U.S. postmaster general.

Johnson wanted the department to keep its ownership over the first telegraph line. He told Congress in 1846 that an instrument that powerful could not safely be left [in the hands of private individuals uncontrolled by law](https://www.mackinac.org/V1997-40?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com). Congress did not pay to extend the line, and in 1847 the department leased it to a private operator.

Private firms built the rest of the country's wires, competed, and merged.

By 1866 Western Union, the largest of the private operators, had bought the American Telegraph Company and the United States Telegraph Company, [its last two national competitors](https://eh.net/encyclopedia/history-of-the-u-s-telegraph-industry/?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com). One private company then controlled the country's wires, a decade before the telephone existed.

### *Britain bought Its telegraph, then its telephones*

Britain's telegraph also started private, and then the state bought it. Under [the Telegraph Act of 1869](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/32-33/73/pdfs/ukpga%5F18690073%5Fen.pdf?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com), the General Post Office, Britain's state postal agency, [took over the country's inland telegraph on Feb. 5, 1870](https://www.bt.com/bt-plc/assets/documents/about-bt/our-history/bt-archives/information-sheets-and-timelines/bt-and-predecessors.pdf?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com).

A British court settled the telephone's legal status in one ruling. In 1880, in *Attorney-General v. Edison Telephone Company of London*, the Queen's Bench Division [held that a telephone counted as a "telegraph" under the 1869 Act](https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C343?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com), so private firms could operate only under Post Office licenses. The Post Office bought the National Telephone Company's system [in 1912](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/politics-and-government/parliament-nationalizes-british-telephone-system?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com), the last large private carrier in the country.

### *Washington chose regulation, then tried ownership*

The [1913 Kingsbury Commitment](https://www.fcc.gov/document/pai-remarks-100th-anniversary-kingsbury-commitment?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com) made **AT&T**, then the dominant carrier of American long-distance calls, a regulated private monopoly the government supervised and never owned.

Five years later the United States put its wires under its own Post Office anyway.

On August 1, 1918, the United States took possession of every telephone and telegraph line in the country and placed them under **Albert Burleson**, the U.S. postmaster general. One year later, on August 1, 1919, after rates rose and the public turned against the arrangement, the government handed the wires back to their private owners.

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The takeover rested on [a joint resolution of July 16, 1918](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-40/pdf/STATUTE-40-Pg1807.pdf?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com) and President **Woodrow Wilson**'s [proclamation](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-1466-assuming-control-telegraph-and-telephone-systems?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com) putting the systems under Burleson, who [had wanted the telephone inside the Post Office on the European model well before the war](https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1994/11/cj14n2-6.pdf?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com).

The [1913 Kingsbury Commitment](https://www.fcc.gov/document/pai-remarks-100th-anniversary-kingsbury-commitment?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com) made AT&T, the parent company of the Bell System, a regulated private monopoly the government supervised and never owned.

The **Supreme Court** [upheld the takeover in 1919](https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep250/usrep250163/usrep250163.pdf?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com). It also recorded the cost. During the year of federal control, the postmaster general [raised telephone rates and set new charges for installing and moving instruments](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USREPORTS-262/pdf/USREPORTS-262-276.pdf?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com). Long-distance rates rose [roughly 20 percent in January 1919](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=2033124&ref=broadbandbreakfast.com). Congress ended federal control by statute in July 1919, and ownership returned to the private carriers after twelve months.

### *The two systems converge, from 1984 to 1998*

Both Britain and the United States saw their ownership structures transform in 1984\. Britain's 114 years of public ownership ended that November, when the government sold [50.2 percent](https://www.bt.com/bt-plc/assets/documents/about-bt/our-history/bt-archives/information-sheets-and-timelines/privatisation.pdf?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com) of **British Telecom**. In the United States that January, [the divestiture of AT&T's local operating companies took effect](https://www.fjc.gov/history/spotlight-judicial-history/breakup-ma-bell?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com), breaking up a monopoly that had always been privately owned.

Other governments moved their telephone networks into private ownership over the next thirteen years.

Japan turned Nippon Telegraph and Telephone [from a state corporation into a joint-stock company on April 1, 1985](https://group.ntt/en/corporate/overview?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com). Germany took Deutsche Telekom public in November 1996 in [the largest initial public offering in the world to that point](https://www.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/history/moments/1996-deutsche-telekom-privatization?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com). France sold a stake in France Telecom [in October 1997](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-sep-09-fi-30219-story.html?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com). 

On January 1, 1998, the European Union's [deadline for opening telecommunications markets fully to competition took effect](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/markets-in-telecommunications-services-and-information-competition-in-the-markets-in-telecommunications-terminal-equipment.html?ref=broadbandbreakfast.com), with later deadlines for a handful of member states.