1910s. The inconvenience of a dual telephone system, which required two sets of phones in each residence or business, and two sets of lines criss-crossing the city, brought growing pressure for consolidation of operations. In 1915, negotiations between Bell and the independents began in New York State. Two years later it was agreed that a new corporation, independent of the Bell organization, would be created to buy and operate the telephone systems of both companies. Rochester Telephone Corporation (1920-1995) Rochester Telephone Corporation (RTC) was for most of the 20th century, the sole phone company serving Rochester and surrounding counties in upstate New York. Some telephone equipment in the Rochester area still bears the company's name. Its initial development benefited from the vision of Albrecht Vogt, an early founder of and investor in several Rochester industries, and yielded a successful company that remained independent from the Bell System up to and through the national monopoly’s divestiture in 1984. As a smaller organization with a high-tech city at its core (headquarters of Eastman Kodak and Xerox) RT often led the conservative and intransigent AT&T when it came to features and customer service, delivering, for instance, Touch Tone and caller ID services well before neighborhoods serviced by Bell’s regional divisions, like New York Telephone. The newly constituted company, which had been given the name Rochester Telephone Corporation, had 1,200 employees and assets worth about $6 million. On August 1, 1921, the two halves of the new independent system began operating as one. During the ensuing decade, Rochester Telephone grew dramatically, as the nation's economy boomed in the aftermath of World War I. At the end of 1921, the company had more than 55,000 phones in service. Two years later, after a long controversy, Rochester Telephone won the right to bill its business customers by call, rather than on a flat rate. By 1926, the number of phones had grown to 84,000. Despite these gains, Rochester Telephone worked continuously to convince people that the telephone was not just a luxury or a gimmick—it was a necessity. The company ran ads in newspapers and on the fledgling medium of radio and also enlisted its employees in sales drives. In 1928, the company recorded its largest jump ever in the number of telephones on line and passed the $1 million mark in revenues. In addition to these gains, Rochester Telephone made a decision in the 1920s