telephone service
8
1.9
- noun
- /ˈtɛlɪˌfoʊn ˈsɜrvɪs/
:
servicio telefónico
- A recent storm caused interruptions in telephone service for many residents in the area.
- commercial telephone service
- distance and telephone service
Examples
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Comcast sells Internet service, telephone service, and TV service.
Blog text (11) -
Emily had come close many times to having her heat and electricity cut off, and her telephone service was a month-to-month arrangement.
Fiction book (1993) -
All public telephone service has been suspended until further notice.
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Electricity and telephone service were more readily available in the early years.
Academic text (1991) -
There may also be public facilities for long-distance and international telephone service.
Academic text (1991) -
And as you were told, there's no telephone service, there's no TV.
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The telephone service is still out in the fourth quadrant from Warren to Vermont.
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By 1990, the town of Cuca itself had some 2,500 residents, scores of businesses, telephone service, television reception, and other modern conveniences.
Academic text (1992) -
The appellant challenged a specific portion of the Act that prevented it from providing long-distance telephone service without first satisfying certain statutory criteria.
Academic text (2000) -
For starters, good communication systems, including telephone service, faxes, modems, and knowledgeable concierges, are high on the must-have list.
Academic text (1995)
Synonyms
24
1.1
A service that lets people make and receive calls
How Reliable
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'telephone' (device/communication by phone) + 'service' (a provider of assistance/work) yields a service for telephone calls. This noun+noun composition is frequent and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Telephone service comes from the early days of the telephone, when operators sat at a board with many plugs and wires and physically connected two callers by plugging lines together. So that picture explains why telephone service means 'to make and receive phone calls'.