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The thing is that the structure of the human brain is extremely different to that of a telephone system. Prior to birth, there are millions more connections and active neurons in the infant mind - in the first few months of life much of what goes on in a child's mind is stripping down many of these un-used connections. This allows the brain to map itself out, to re-shape itself depending on what inputs it gets from the outside world. If you blindfold a child, raise it in darkness, or if it is congenitally blind, it will fail to develop the pathways necessary to process visual information - or more precisely, the normal pathways will be stripped out through non-usage.
I don't see an analogous process in the telephone network - nor do I see there being any particular response to events. If a child responds to its surroundings, what does a global telephone network respond to? What 'surroundings' can it be aware of? I think you need to have an outside world before you can achieve conciousness - it's an evolutionary tool, just like flippers, claws or pointy teeth - without anything to respond to, I just don't see how it could evolve.
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