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From: ndallen@contact.uucp (Nigel Allen)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Whatever Happened to the Telephone Pioneers?
Message-ID: <13894@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 20 Oct 90 08:45:00 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 753, Message 4 of 6


The Telephone Pioneers of America also operate in Canada, at least in
the operating territories of Bell Canada (most of Ontario and Quebec)
and Martitime Tel & Tel (Nova Scotia).
 
Our Moderator writes:

 > They are still around in the local operating companies, and at AT&T.
 
I think that Pioneers in independent telcos (the term used
pre-divestiture to refer to non-Bell system telephone companies)
belonged to a separate organization, the Independent Telephone
Pioneers. I do not know whether this group is still separate from the
main body of Pioneers.
 
Does anyone know whether any of the long-distance carriers have their
own Pioneer chapters?  I rather doubt it, since traditionally the
Pioneers were a service club for telco employees who had been with the
company a long time (21 years, perhaps, although the Bell Canada clubs
have reduced the requirement somewhat). People who weren't yet
eligible to join could help out as "Future Pioneers".
 
Interestingly, the president of the Telephone Pioneers of America is
always an executive of a telephone company, typically the president or
a vice-president.  As much as I admire the work of the Telephone
Pioneers, I suspect that the organization was founded at least partly
to foster the idea that telephone company workers and their managers
are "one big, happy family".