Innovation Timeline
This is borrowed quite liberally form Wikipedia - sources are linked.
1875
April 6th – Bell’s U.S. Patent 161,739 “Transmitters and Receivers for Electric Telegraphs” is granted. This uses multiple vibrating steel reeds in make-break circuits, and the concept of multiplexed frequencies. (source)
1876
March 7th – Bell’s U.S. patent No. 174,465 for the telephone is granted. (source)
1877
Bell’s U.S. patent No. 186,787 is granted for an electromagnetic telephone using permanent magnets, iron diaphragms, and a call bell. (source)
The first long-distance telephone in the world, built in 1877 by the Ridge Telephone Company, connects French Corral with French Lake, 58 miles away. It was operated by the Milton Mining Company (source)
December 1st – Western Union enters the telephone business using Thomas Edison’s superior carbon microphone transmitter.
1878
June 14th – The Telephone Company Ltd (Bell’s Patents) registered, London. Opened in London 21 August 1879 – Europe’s first telephone exchange.
1879
September 10th – Connolly and McTighe patent a “dial” telephone exchange (limited in the number of lines to the number of positions on the dial.).
1885
AT&T is formed.
1915
January 25th – 1915 The inaugural first transcontinental telephone call, with Thomas Augustus Watson at 333 Grant Avenue in San Francisco receiving a call from Alexander Graham Bell at 15 Day Street in New York City.[4]
1919
AT&T conducts more than 4,000 measurements of people’s heads to gauge the best dimensions of standard headsets so that callers’ lips would be near the microphone when holding handsets up to their ears.
1935
First telephone call around the world
1958
Modems used for direct connection via voice phone lines
1961
Touch tone phones introduced
1970
Modular telephone cords and jacks introduced
1971
AT&T submitted a proposal for cellular phone service to the FCC.
1973
Motorola employee Martin Cooper placed the first hand-held cell phone call to rival Joel Engel, head of research at AT&T’s Bell Labs, while talking on the first Motorola DynaTAC prototype.
1974
Early groundwork for VoIP is laid when the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) published a paper titled “A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection.”[2]
1975
Voicemail is simultaneously invented by Dr. Steven J. Boies (c.1975)[1][citation needed] and at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) by Stan Kugell and Edward McCreight. (source)
Voip invented
1989
Unified Messaging is invented by Roberta Cohen, Kenneth Huber and Deborah Mill at AT&T Bell Labs. The patent for Unified Messaging was received in June, 1989 (Patent number 4,837,798). (source)
1990
Octel introduces the concept of Visual Mailbox and Unifed Messaging where users can control their voicemail box via their PC (source)
1995
VocalTec releases the first commercial internet phone software (source) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VoIP#History
2004
Commercial VoIP providers become widespread
2009
December 2009 – Twilio announces Series A funding for $3.7M
2010
January 2010 – IfbyPhone Acquires Cloudvox