1876- Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.
1888 - The Bell Company telephone monopoly is established.
1894 - Non-Bell companies enter the rural telephone market.
1919 - Rotary-dial service is introduced. Rotary-dial service permitted the installation of switching systems which rendered the calling process a little more automatic.2
1963 - Touch-tone service is introduced.3 Touch-tone service permitted the use of now infamous automated phone menus. "Touch 1 for Sales, touch 2 for Customer Service, and touch 3 for ..."
1967 - Toll-free (800) service is introduced.
1984 - The AT&T monopoly is dissolved.
1988 - Commercial voicemail service is introduced. Until 1988, telephone companies were legally barred from offering voicemail to their subscribers as part of an effort by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to protect telephone answering businesses.4
1992 - The first smartphone is introduced.
1993 - Digital cellular service is introduced.
1995 - The first Internet (VoIP) phone is introduced.
1996 - The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is enacted.
2002 - 3G (Third Generation) cellular service is introduced.
2008 - 4G (Fourth Generation) cellular service is introduced.
2010 - 4G LTE (Fourth Generation Long-Term Evolution) cellular service is introduced.
2012 - The 4G Apple iPhone 5 is introduced

1 The telephone system that was to evolve into today's multi-faceted telecommunications system began with Bell's invention. Without bell going forward with this we would never of had the telephone just the light bulb
2 For the majority of its history, AT&T, the parent company of the Bell system, functioned as a legally sanctioned, regulated monopoly. The guiding principle used to defend its position, promoted by AT&T President Theodore Vail in 1907, was that a monopolistic structure would be the most efficient foundation to support the development of universal telephone service. Vail maintained that appropriate government regulation was an acceptable substitute for the competitive marketplace. The US government accepted this principle informally at first and later through legislation. Despite an antitrust suit filed in 1949 and sporadic investigations into AT&T's business practices, the monopoly lasted until US District Judge Harold Greene ruled that AT&T had to divest its local service operations, which it agreed to do in 1984. If they had contained with the monopoly we would be paying a lot for phone services and we would not have the compaction that we have today for the best rates.

3 In terms of fostering competition, protecting the rights of consumers, and ensuring universal access, the breakup of the Bell System was an important step, but was deemed insufficient in creating a truly open market for telecom services. Congress in 1996 passed the comprehensive Telecommunications Act seeking to strike a balance between the needs of customers and providers, incumbents and new entrants, local and long distance companies, urban and rural areas, and regulatory agencies this way we can have a better service for lower bills

4 The last decade has been marked by two phenomena: the introduction of smarter smartphones, and the introduction of faster and faster cellular networks. The network race is not being fueled by traditional telephony concerns, but rather by the need to support data-intensive Internet access. This is very true with all the devices we have that need the bandwidth to run things are going to get clogged up if we run out of bandwidth to run them all.