Hillsborough & Montgomery Telephone Company

With Verizon set to announce this week that they will be carrying Apple's iPhone, a move that will result in the sales of millions of the high tech gadgets, it's interesting to note that the Hillsborough & Montgomery Telephone Company launched in 1904 with just thirteen customers!

This uncredited photograph which appeared in the Franklin News Record in 1971
 shows equipment being tested prior to a service upgrade.

Formed in November of 1903 to serve the rural communities around Belle Mead - southern Hillsborough, northern Montgomery, Millstone, and Griggstown - the company was, by 1971, serving over 3,500 customers.

New IBM computers are shown in this photo from the February 2, 1972 Courier News

Growing pains later that decade resulting from the mid-seventies housing boom led to service problems - there were eventually 6,000 customers using 12,000 phones - and a huge equipment upgrade investment.

Even after the upgrades problems with service persisted. An appearance at a township committee meeting on November 20, 1973 by H&M to explain why Hillsborough customers could not get free toll service to Somerville and Manville turned into a general gripe session with both Hillsborough residents and township committee members complaining about service. Complaints included not being able to make calls, and picking up the receiver expecting a dial tone, but hearing someone else's conversation.

A 1979 public service ad from United Telephone, still using the H&M name.

By the end of the decade. Hillsborough & Montgomery's 102 shareholders were looking to merge New Jersey's last independent phone company with one of the larger national companies. In October of 1978 they reached an agreement with United Telephone - then the nation's third largest telephone system - to merge the two companies. H&M shareholders received twenty shares of United stock for every share of H&M stock they held.