GTE Corporation, formerly General Telephone & Electronics Corporation (1955–1982), was the largest independent telephone company in the United States during the days of the Bell System. The company operated from 1926, with roots tracing further back than that, until 2000, when it was acquired by Bell Atlantic; the combined company took the name Verizon.
Warner Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate owned by AT&T and headquartered in New York City. It was originally formed in 1990 as Time Warner, from the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications. The company has film, television and cable operations, with its assets including WarnerMedia Entertainment, WarnerMedia News & Sports, and Warner Bros..
Comcast Corporation is an American telecommunications conglomerate headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is the second-largest broadcasting and cable television company in the world by revenue and the largest pay-TV company, the largest cable TV company and largest home Internet service provider in the United States, and the nation's third-largest home telephone service provider. Comcast services U.S. residential and commercial customers in 40 states and in the District of Columbia. As the owner of the international media company NBCUniversal since 2011, Comcast is a producer of feature films and television programs intended for theatrical exhibition and over-the-air and cable television broadcast, respectively.
Rogers Cable Inc. is Canada's largest cable television service provider with about 2.25 million television customers, and over 930,000 Internet subscribers, primarily in Southern & Eastern Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador. Rogers Cable is a division of Rogers Communications Partnership, itself wholly owned by Rogers Communications Inc.
US West, Inc., was one of seven Regional Bell Operating Companies, created in 1983 under the Modification of Final Judgement, a case related to the antitrust breakup of AT&T. US West provided local telephone and intraLATA long distance services, data transmission services, cable television services, wireless communications services and related telecommunications products to defined areas in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. US West was a public company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "USW" with headquarters at 1801 California Street in Denver, Colorado.
Shaw Communications Inc. is a Canadian telecommunications company which provides telephone, Internet, television, and mobile services all backed by a fibre optic network. Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Shaw provides services mostly in British Columbia and Alberta, with smaller systems in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Northern Ontario. Through its subsidiary Freedom Mobile, Shaw provides mobile services in urban areas of British Columbia, Alberta, and Southern Ontario. The company's chief competitor is Telus Corporation.
Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) was a cable television provider in the United States, and for most of its history was controlled by Bob Magness and John Malone.
Charter Communications, Inc. is an American telecommunications and mass media company that offers its services to consumers and businesses under the branding of Spectrum. Providing services to over 26 million customers in 41 states, it is the second-largest cable operator in the United States by subscribers, just behind Comcast, and third largest pay TV operator behind Comcast and AT&T. It is the fifth largest telephone provider based upon residential subscriber line count.
Xfinity is a trade name of Comcast Cable Communications, LLC, a subsidiary of the Comcast Corporation, used to market consumer cable television, internet, telephone, and wireless services provided by the company. The brand was first introduced in 2010; prior to that, these services were marketed primarily under the Comcast name.
Spectrum or Charter Spectrum is a trade name of Charter Communications, used to market consumer cable television, internet, telephone, and wireless services provided by the company.
Time Warner Cable (TWC) was an American cable television company. Before it was purchased by Charter Communications on May 18, 2016, it was ranked the second largest cable company in the United States by revenue behind only Comcast, operating in 29 states. Its corporate headquarters were located in the Time Warner Center in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, with other corporate offices in Stamford, Connecticut; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Herndon, Virginia.
Bright House Networks, LLC was an American telecom company. Prior to its purchase by Charter Communications, it was the tenth-largest multichannel video service provider and the 6th largest cable internet provider in the United States. The company served more than 2.2 million customers.
Centel Corporation was an American telecommunications company, with primary interests in providing basic telephone service, cellular phone service and cable television service.
@Home Network was a high-speed cable Internet service provider from 1996 to 2002. It was founded by Milo Medin, cable companies Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), Comcast, and Cox Communications, and William Randolph Hearst III, who was their first CEO, as a joint venture to produce high-speed cable Internet service through two-way television cable infrastructure. At the company's peak it provided high speed Internet service for 4.1 million subscribers in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the Benelux nations. The company operated as four joint ventures, three of which were international. In 1999, the company acquired Excite. In 2008, @Home was merged into Ziggo.
MediaOne Group, Inc. was created by US WEST Inc, one of the original Baby Bells Regional Bell Operating Companies, acquisition of Boston-based Continental Cable and combined with its previously acquired Atlanta-based Wometco/GTC. Wometco/GTC had adopted the MediaOne name a year earlier. Media One Group was acquired in 2000 by AT&T Broadband, and was subsequently acquired by Comcast in 2002.
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company, the largest provider of mobile telephone services, and the largest provider of fixed telephone services in the United States through AT&T Communications. Since June 14, 2018, it is also the parent company of mass media conglomerate WarnerMedia, making it the world's largest media and entertainment company in terms of revenue. As of 2018, AT&T is ranked #9 on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
Windjammer Cable is a small cable company formed by the sale of 25 systems that served 80,000 customers in rural areas that Time Warner Cable acquired from the bankrupt Adelphia. Windjammer was created specifically for this deal and consisted of Boston private-equity concern MAST Capital Management and Jupiter, Fla.-based small cable operator Communications Construction Services (CCS). Although it acquired some systems, such as all but two West Virginia systems, Subscribers received a letter on Jan. 24, 2009 saying that they will terminate service on February 17, 2009; date of the Digital Transition.
The telex network was a customer-to-customer switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network, using telegraph-grade connecting circuits for two-way text-based messages. Telex was a major method of sending written messages electronically between businesses in the post-World War II period. Its usage went into decline as the fax machine grew in popularity in the 1980s.
In December 2009, Comcast announced its intent to acquire a majority stake in the media conglomerate NBC Universal from General Electric (GE). The planned acquisition was subject to scrutiny from activists and government officials; their concerns primarily surrounded the potential effects of the vertical integration that the acquisition could create, as Comcast is also heavily involved in cable television and internet services in many media markets. The deal went through, resulting in Comcast owning 51% of the company until March 2013, when GE divested its stake to give Comcast sole ownership.
The history of AT&T dates back to the invention of the telephone. The Bell Telephone Company was established in 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell, who obtained the first US patent for the telephone, and his father-in-law, Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Bell and Hubbard also established American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885, which acquired the Bell Telephone Company and became the primary telephone company in the United States. This company maintained a monopoly on telephone service in the United States until anti-trust regulators split the company in 1982.
