He confined each agent to one place, and reserved all rights to connect one city with another.

He established a department to collect and protect any new inventions that concerned the telephone.

He agreed to take part of the royalties in stock, when any local company preferred to pay its debts in this way.

And he took steps toward standardizing all telephonic apparatus by controlling the factories that made it.
These various measures were part of Vail's plan to create a national telephone system.

His central idea, from the first, was not the mere leasing of telephones, but rather the creation of a Federal company that would be a permanent partner in the entire telephone business.