His previous experience as the head of the railway mail service had lifted him up to a higher point of view.
He knew the need of a national system of communication that would be quicker and more direct than either the telegraph or the post office.
"I saw that if the telephone could talk one mile to-day," he said, "it would be talking a hundred miles to-morrow." And he persisted, in spite of a considerable deal of ridicule, in maintaining that the telephone was destined to connect cities and nations as well as individuals.
Four months after he had prophesied the "grand telephonic system," he encouraged Charles J.Glidden, of world-tour fame, to build a telephone line between Boston and Lowell.

This was the first inter-city line.

It was well placed, as the owners of the Lowell mills lived in Boston, and it made a small profit from the start.

This success cheered Vail on to a master-effort.

He resolved to build a line from Boston to Providence, and was so stubbornly bent upon doing this that when the Bell Company refused to act, he picked up the risk and set off with it alone.
He organized a company of well-known Rhode Islanders--nicknamed the "Governors' Company"-- and built the line.