When was the telephone first used by the general public?

By now, everyone knows or should know what a telephone is. The telephone was invented so that that people around the world could communicate with each other over large distances. As most know, the phones have come very far from the first invention. Five billion, out of the eighty percent of the world that own mobile phones, now have smart phones with constant connection to the internet, games, hundreds of other people, movies and so many applications that they are difficult to think of. Of course it all had to begin somewhere though, and that beginning was with Alexander Graham Bell who patented the first telephone in 1876.