The Bell System was the system of companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by AT&T, which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. On December 31, 1983, the system was divided into independent companies by a U.S. Justice Department mandate.
The general public in the United States often used the colloquial term Ma Bell (as in "Mother Bell") to refer to any aspect of this conglomerate, as it held a near-complete monopoly over telephone service in most areas of the country, and is still used by many to refer to any telephone company. Ma Bell is also used to refer to the various female voices in recordings for the Bell System: Mary Moore, Jane Barbe, and Pat Fleet, the current voice of AT&T.