List of United States telephone companies

This is a list of United States telephone companies.

Regional Bell Operating Companies

The seven Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) were created as the result of the break-up of the Bell System in 1984. After numerous mergers, divestments, and rebrandings since the break-up, these are the current successor RBOCs:

• AT&T: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin
• Verizon: Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia
• Lumen Technologies: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wyoming.
• Frontier Communications: Connecticut and West Virginia (acquired from AT&T and Verizon, respectively)
• Consolidated Communications: Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, (acquired from FairPoint Communications, which had acquired them from Verizon).

Altafiber, formerly known as Cincinnati Bell, serves ex-Bell exchanges in the Cincinnati metropolitan area. It was not transferred to an RBOC in the Bell System breakup because the original AT&T held only a minority stake in the company.

Other local exchange carrier areas

RBOCs that, through mergers and acquisitions, also serve as local exchange carriers in areas that were not covered by the Bell System include:

• Verizon, in addition to the ex-Bell exchanges it has retained, serves former GTE areas in Pennsylvania and Virginia.
• Lumen Technologies, in addition to the ex-Bell exchanges in 14 states gained from its acquisition of Qwest, serves other non-ex-Bell local exchanges in those states, as well as some in Florida and the Las Vegas metropolitan area in Nevada.
• Frontier Communications, in addition to its ex-Bell exchanges in West Virginia and Connecticut, serves mainly rural and some suburban and smaller city areas in 27 other states, many formerly part of the GTE system purchased from Verizon, including parts of Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin.
• Consolidated Communications, in addition to its ex-Bell exchanges in Northern New England, also serves rural areas in 22 states. ^[1]
• Altafiber, in addition to its ex-Bell exchanges in the Cincinnati area, operates exchanges in Hawaii via its ownership of Hawaiian Telcom. ^[2]

Non-Bell exchange carriers

• Brightspeed was formed in 2022 when Lumen sold its landline operations in 20 states outside its core area (and Florida). ^[3]
• Windstream, founded in 2006 with the spinoff of Alltel's wireline division and simultaneous merger with Valor Telecom, serves mainly rural areas in 29 states.
• Telephone and Data Systems serves mainly rural areas in parts of 36 states. ^[4]
• Claro Puerto Rico, which serves every exchange in Puerto Rico, has been owned by the international telecommunications giant América Móvil since 2007.
• Ziply Fiber serves ex-GTE areas in Idaho, Washington and Oregon acquired from Frontier.

Many other individual communities or smaller regions are also served by non-RBOC companies.

See also

• Lists of public utilities
• List of Canadian telephone companies

Notes

1. "Service Area Locations - Consolidated Communications". www.consolidated.com.
2. "Cincinnati Bell acquires two peers for $851M".
3. "Lumen completes $7.5bn sale of operations in 20 states to Brightspeed". October 4, 2022.
4. "TDS 2016 Annual Report" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on February 4, 2018.