over lines strung along streets on poles with crossbars, which observers complained were unsightly. In 1886 the Bell Company announced that customers would no longer be charged a flat fee, but would be charged by call for all telephone use over 500 calls a year. Outraged customers objected, and the Rochester city council revoked the company's franchise. In addition, telephone users staged a strike, removing their receivers at noon on November 20, 1886, and leaving them off the hook for 18 months while the company stood fast. Finally, Bell gave way, offering lower rates, and the strike was ended. The telephone strike had stimulated in Rochester's citizens a desire for a locally owned telephone company. When the Bell Company's patents expired in 1893, many competing telephone enterprises sprung up. In early 1899, a group of Rochester businessmen joined this movement when they founded the Home Telephone Company. By the end of the year, the company's name had been changed to Rochester Telephone Company. The upstart company drummed up about 1500 subscribers for its services and presented a petition to the Rochester City Council for a franchise, which was approved in April 1899. On May 13, 1900, Rochester Telephone inaugurated service to about 1,800 customers. Steady expansion took place in its early years. The company added 1,000 new lines to its switchboard, a second story to its headquarters building, and an entire second switchboard. In addition, Rochester Telephone widened its area of service to include the towns of Charlotte, Fairport, and Pittsford outside city limits. Other counties in western New York were served by company subsidiaries, the Genesee Valley Telephone Company, and the Interlake Telephone Company. Although customers professed higher satisfaction with the service of the independent Rochester Telephone Company than they had with the Bell system, they were unable to make long-distance calls. In an effort to provide a nationwide network that would allow long-distance calling, the country's alternative telephone companies established the United States Independent Telephone Company in 1905. Two years later, however, after its failure to win entry to the key New York City market, the company failed. Rochester Telephone, which had invested heavily in the enterprise, suffered severe financial damage with its bankruptcy. This, coupled with the high costs of competition with the Bell network, prevented the company from raising any new investment capital for the next four years, and it continued to limp along throughout the