AS my grand father would tell you, who retired from AT&T in the early 90s. The "telephone company" had the ability for pretty much every employee to be remote except for field techs and sales people in the 80s. And he in fact had people he worked with who were 100% remote in the 80s. Field tech, because that is obvious. Sales because when he sold a large contract, he was expected to supervise the install, and he wanted to. Before he entered sales he was a field tech, or "telephone pole climber" in his words.