So taxi services had no phone dispatch over there? Like, you couldn't ring the taxi booking, and they would route a taxi to you?
This has been a thing in Sydney for as long as I've been alive --- it probably started up in the 70s. It wasn't great, and sometimes the taxi wouldn't show. But it existed.
Was this not available in SF? Elsewhere in the US...?
From the Wikipedia writeup, it could very well be that they just didn't know the rules, but the experience in SF is the same: you can call a cab, but it's hit-or-miss.
Sometimes while en route to you, they'd pick up another passenger or the wrong cab would pick you up which would frustrate many of the drivers.
Uber just brought it all together and brought enough players into the fold to make "car service" almost strictly superior to "taxi."