Crap. I misread your post.
You’re right, the small ILECs were here from the begining. Divestiture had nothing to do with it.
Right. While there were many independent operators long before the divestiture, the majority of them were tiny mom ‘n’ pop operations serving small towns and villages. Growing up I always heard that Rochester Telephone was the largest independent in the country. Since it never served more than 1% of the country’s population the total for all the independents has to have been pretty small.
On preview I see this has already been said. Rochester Tel hasn’t had that name for years, BTW, and was bought out even before it became Frontier.
If New York is any sort of national guide, I’d say that Dewey’s estimate of 10% of total lines for all carriers is dead on the money.
I’m pretty sure that New York was never in any way typical regarding phone systems. The mom ‘n’ pop operations were unusual in NYS and much more common farther west and south. Then again, those states seldom had independents as big as those in NYS or New England.
The overall 10% number is probably somewhere near accurate, but not because of the NYS example.