Until the divestiture ordered by the Supreme Court in 1982, American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) controlled the industry. Only a few daring people tried to compete with this monopoly, and Howard Davis, founder of Datel Communications in Avon, Massachusetts, was one of them. Howard’s fascination with telephones began long before he started his own company. As a young boy he would take apart and rebuild telephones. He also started collecting telephones and now has several thousand in his collection including a drivable phone car modeled after a touch-tone desk phone.
