Southwestern Bell Telecom brown 500

[guitar1580]

Here's another from the group of 4 that I got locally.  Another color and another brand that I did not have.  It cleaned up well and functions well.  For $13.75, I'm happy with it.  Base and components date to 1984.

[rdelius]

Looks to have been built by ITT

[Stormcrash]

Neat! Interesting that it's not branded as Southwestern Bell Freedom Phone. Does anyone know when they created/acquired that brand for their customer premises equipment? I know it took a few years to shake out the "wholly separated subsidiary" requirements for the baby bells to sell equipment outright so I wonder if this was a lease set or sold set

[guitar1580]

When I first got the Southwestern Bell and the ITT a couple of weeks ago, I looked up the company histories.  It's pretty interesting when you see how far back they go, and how they've branched off of and / or became parts of other commonly known companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_Bell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Inc.

Josh

[Key2871]

That's very interesting, so SBC merged with ITT?
I'm, not seeing the corolation, I looked at the links read the history, but ITT from what I remember was International Telephone & Telegraph.
So at what point did they join together?
Was it when ITT changed to Cortelco?

I do find this fascinating, that two separate company's from different sides of the tracks so to speak joined up to make a new company.

Or is this a case the made it onto a ITT Base because they are so compatable.

[rdelius]

Itt would build telephones for others . I have an ITT-Kellogg 500 set branded Webster Electric. They made intercoms. Because of the Bell break-up, the "Baby Bells" could source items from other compainies other than Western Electric.I do not know if your set was made to sell to the consumer or rented.

[Dan/Panther]

Looks to have been built by ITT

SC had the circuit board network, ITT has the unit similar to WE potted version.  However it appears that later on, ITT adapted the same circuit board as the earlier SC's, if indeed that chassis is ITT.

D/P

[Stormcrash]

rdelius is correct. ITT and SWB/SBC never merged, rather this phone appears to have been made for SWB with SWB branding under contract by ITT (I'm guessing since ITT is stamped on the ringer). After the breakup most of the Baby Bells wanted to ape AT&T's old structure as much as possible and started setting up subsidiaries to manage or sell customer equipment, since AT&T got to keep WE and the legacy telephone leases in the breakup

[Key2871]

I wonder what the underside of the base is marked. I wonder does it have a sticker that marks it as ITT or SWB, or even Cortelco.
I know ITT made components for other company's such as Kellogg,
I had no idea SWB could source from others, but that only makes sense because Western Electric was basically shut down.
I would say that entire base is ITT. The ringer his, as is the network.
I've never come across a Bell south set such as that, just cordless phones and trimlines knock offs.
So that's pretty cool.

[Stormcrash]

ITT bought Kellogg and it became ITT's north american equipment operation. As soon as the breakup took effect the Baby Bells were free to start sourcing form companies besices Western Electric/AT&T Techlogoies, and a lot of them did, and launched their own equipment brands

US West: Bell Phones by Northwestern Bell Phones
Southwestern Bell: Southwestern Bell Telecom, later Southwestern Bell Freedom Phone
Bellsouth: Bellsouth Products
Pacific Telesis: Pacific Bell branded sets

Bellsouth definitely had 2500 sets made for them branded "Bellsouth Products", don't know who made them but I've seen them on eBay.

Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, and Ameritech don't seem to have gone in as deep into equipment, but there is some stuff with those brands out there so I don't know what their whole story was

[guitar1580]

Yes, the base has an ITT sticker on it, and stampings which indicate 1984.  I had forgotten to get a pic of the base yesterday, so here ya go.