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, which changed its name to Verizon.
A Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC) was a corporate entity created as result of the antitrust lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice against the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1974 and settled in the Modification of Final Judgment on January 8, 1982.
AT&T Teleholdings, Inc., formerly known as Ameritech Corporation, was an American telecommunications company that arose out of the 1984 AT&T divestiture. Ameritech was one of the seven Regional Bell Operating Companies created following the breakup of the Bell System. Ameritech was acquired in 1999 by SBC Communications, which subsequently acquired AT&T Corporation in 2006, becoming the present-day AT&T.
BellSouth, LLC was an American telecommunications holding company based in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating Companies after the U.S. Department of Justice forced the American Telephone & Telegraph Company to divest itself of its regional telephone companies on January 1, 1984.
Southern New England Telecommunications Corporation (SNET) started operations in 1986 as the holding company for the Southern New England Telephone Company, the dominant local phone carrier in Connecticut, which had been a minority holding of AT&T until February 1986, when AT&T sold its 23% ownership. SNET then became its own company, operating a telecommunications sales division, Sonecor Systems Division, which began operations on January 1, 1983, and sold equipment in competition with AT&T before the Bell System divestiture. SNET also operated SNET America, which sold long-distance services to Southern New England Telephone customers within Connecticut.
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.
Cincinnati Bell, Inc., doing business as Altafiber, is a regional telecommunications service provider based in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. It provides landline telephone, fiber-optic Internet, and IPTV services through its subsidiaries Altafiber Home Phone and Hawaiian Telcom, which are the incumbent local exchange carriers for the Greater Cincinnati metropolitan area and Hawaii. Other subsidiaries provide enterprise information technology services and long distance calling.
Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company was a Bell Operating Company serving the Southeastern United States of Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina. It also previously covered the states of Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee until 1968 when those were split off to form South Central Bell. In 1984, it became a subsidiary of BellSouth Corporation in the breakup of the Bell System.
Cellular One is the trademarked brand name that licenses services used by several cellular service providers in the United States. The brand was sold to Trilogy Partners by AT&T in 2008 shortly after AT&T had completed its acquisition of Dobson Communications. Cellular One was originally the trade name of one of the first mobile telephone service providers.
The monopoly position of the Bell System in the U.S. was ended on January 8, 1982. AT&T Corporation proposed by in a consent decree to relinquish control of the Bell Operating Companies, which had provided local telephone service in the United States. AT&T would continue to be a provider of long-distance service, while the now-independent Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs), nicknamed the "Baby Bells", would provide local service, and would no longer be directly supplied with equipment from AT&T subsidiary Western Electric.
The Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company was an American telecommunications company based in Seattle, Washington. It was a local exchange carrier for the Bell System, the AT&T Corporation-controlled network of companies, providing telecommunications services in Oregon, Washington, and northern Idaho. Pacific Northwest Bell was formed in 1961 when it was spun off from the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company. Pacific Northwest Bell was split from AT&T in 1984 as ordered in the settlement of United States v. AT&T and became a subsidiary of US West, a then-newly formed Regional Bell Operating Company. US West consolidated its three main operating subsidiaries in 1991. US West merged with Qwest in 2000, and the US West brand was replaced by the Qwest brand. Qwest Communications merged with Louisiana-based CenturyLink in 2011, and the Qwest brand was replaced by the CenturyLink brand. It now does business with the Lumen Technologies brand as of 2020.
Verizon New England, Inc. is a Bell Operating Company that once covered most of New England but now only serves most of Massachusetts and all of Rhode Island. It was formerly the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, more commonly known as New England Telephone, which for seven decades served most of the New England area of the United States as a part of the original AT&T. New England Telephone's original coverage area included Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont as well as Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Verizon has sold off service in the northern three states, which as of 2020 were served by Consolidated Communications.
Verizon South, Inc. is a Verizon operating company providing local telephone services to portions of Virginia and North Carolina in the United States.
Qwest Corporation, doing business as CenturyLink QC, is a Regional Bell Operating Company owned by Lumen Technologies. It was originally named Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company, later becoming known as Mountain Bell, then US West Communications, Inc. from 1991 to 2000. It includes the former operations of Malheur Bell, Northwestern Bell and Pacific Northwest Bell as well.
Alcatel–Lucent S.A. was a multinational telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris, France. The company focused on fixed, mobile and converged networking hardware, IP technologies, software and services, and operated between 2006 and 2016 in more than 130 countries.
Qwest Communications International, Inc. was a United States telecommunications carrier. Qwest provided local service in 14 western and midwestern U.S. states: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over 100 years from its creation in 1877 until its antitrust breakup in 1983. The system of companies was often colloquially called Ma Bell, as it held a vertical monopoly over telecommunication products and services in most areas of the United States and Canada. At the time of the breakup of the Bell System in the early 1980s, it had assets of $150 billion and employed over one million people.
AT&T Corporation, an abbreviation for its former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was an American telecommunications company that provided voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agencies.
Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T. It does business as other d.b.a. names in its operating region, which includes Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and portions of Illinois. The company is currently headquartered in Dallas, Texas at One AT&T Plaza.
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 an effective monopoly on local telephone service in the United States until anti-trust regulators agreed to allow AT&T to retain Western Electric and enter general trades computer manufacture and sales in return for its offer to split the Bell System by divesting itself of ownership of the Bell Operating Companies in 1982.
