"Mr. Watson, Come Here": AT&T Marks 150 Years of the Telephone
“Mr. Watson, Come Here”: AT&T Marks 150 Years of the Telephone
INDIANAPOLIS — “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”
With those eight words spoken 150 years ago today—March 10, 1876—Alexander Graham Bell sparked a revolution. What began as a primitive experiment with a single copper wire has transformed into a global digital landscape, a legacy that modern-day AT&T is celebrating with a massive $250 billion commitment to the nation’s future and a specific focus on the Hoosier State.
Bell’s startup, the Bell Telephone Company, eventually became American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T). Over the last 150 years, the company has been at the center of the world’s most vital connections:
1876: The first intelligible sentence transmitted via telephone.
1915: The first trans-continental call (New York to San Francisco).
1968: The establishment of the nation’s first 911 system.
1969: The first call to the moon, reaching the Apollo 11 crew.
2017: The launch of FirstNet, the only network built specifically for first responders.
“Today, we’re committing more than $250 billion to increase U.S. connectivity competitiveness,” said John Stankey, Chairman and CEO of AT&T. “We look forward to serving American communities and businesses for the next 150 years.”
The Indiana Impact: $1.9 Billion and Counting
While the national anniversary looks at the broad arc of history, the impact is felt locally. Over the past five years, AT&T has invested nearly $1.9 billion in Indiana’s network infrastructure.
These funds have been used to modernize connectivity across the state, from high-traffic urban centers to rural farmland. Recent highlights of the Indiana contribution include:
Targeted Infrastructure: More than $750 million invested in the Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson area alone.
Rural Expansion: Completing public-private fiber projects in rural Delaware County and Lawrence County to bridge the digital divide.
FirstNet Growth: Rolling out “Band 14” high-speed spectrum on nearly 1,300 sites across Indiana to give first responders a dedicated “fast lane” for emergencies.
Community Support: Opening the AT&T Connected Learning Center at the Indianapolis Urban League to provide free digital resources and high-speed internet to local families.
To honor this anniversary, AT&T’s new $250 billion plan through 2030 aims to deploy the infrastructure needed for the next era of innovation. This includes accelerating 5G and fiber-optic builds to support artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and remote medical care.
The company is also leaning into its collaboration with AST SpaceMobile to one day offer voice, text, and data services in remote “off-grid” locations where traditional cell towers cannot reach.
As the company transitions away from its legacy copper network to an all-fiber and wireless future, it remains committed to the spirit of its founder. Today, the AT&T network carries over one exabyte of data daily—the equivalent of downloading every book ever written thousands of times over, every single day.
