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.
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.
NYNEX Corporation was an American telephone company that served five states of New England as well as most of the state of New York from January 1, 1984 to August 14, 1997.
Pacific Telesis Group (PacTel) was one of the seven Regional Bell Operating Companies, sometimes also referred to as "RBOCs" or "Baby Bells", created in 1983 in preparation of the breakup of AT&T Corporation. Pacific Telesis was the holding company for Pacific Bell, Nevada Bell, Pacific Telesis International, PacTel Mobile Services and PacTel InfoSystems. Pacific Telesis was headquartered in San Francisco and incorporated in Nevada. It was acquired by SBC Communications in 1997, which would eventually become today’s AT&T Inc.
Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company is the regional Bell Operating Company serving the Southeastern United States of Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina. However, the Southern Bell name isn't used anymore as of 1992 although the network still exists. It also covered the states of Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee until 1968 when those were split off to form South Central Bell.
The Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad was a railroad connecting Richmond, Virginia, to Washington, D.C. The track is now the RF&P Subdivision of the CSX Transportation system; the original corporation is no longer a railroad company.
Verizon Pennsylvania LLC, formerly traded as Bell of Pennsylvania, is the Bell Operating Company serving most of Pennsylvania. The company was founded in 1879 as Bell Telephone Company of Philadelphia, owned by National Bell Telephone Company, which later became American Bell.
The monopoly position of the Bell System in the U.S. was ended on January 8, 1982, by a consent decree providing that AT&T Corporation would, as had been initially proposed by AT&T, 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.
Verizon New England, Inc. was a Bell Operating Company that once covered most of New England but most recently only served most of Massachusetts and all of Rhode Island. It was formerly 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 New Jersey, Inc., formerly New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, is the Bell Operating Company serving the U.S. state of New Jersey. In 1984, the Bell System Divestiture split New Jersey Bell off into a Regional Bell Operating Company, along with the 21 other BOCs AT&T had a majority stake in. On January 1, 1984, New Jersey Bell became part of Bell Atlantic.
The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, usually known as C&P Telephone, is a former d/b/a name for four Bell Operating Companies providing service to Washington, D.C., Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia.
Verizon South, Inc. is a Verizon operating company providing local telephone services to portions of Virginia and North Carolina in the United States.
Frontier North, Inc. is a local telephone operating company owned by Frontier Communications.
Frontier California, Inc. is a Frontier Communications-owned operating company providing telephone service in former Verizon regions. This included Southern California cities such as Long Beach, Seal Beach, Lakewood, Norwalk and Santa Monica.
Area codes 301, 240, and 227 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the western part of the U.S. state of Maryland. The numbering plan area (NPA) comprises Maryland's portion of the Greater Washington, D.C. metro area, portions of southern Maryland, along with rural western Maryland. This includes the communities of Cumberland, Frederick, Hagerstown, Gaithersburg, Potomac, Germantown, Bethesda, Rockville, Landover, Silver Spring, and Waldorf.
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.
The following is a brief history of the North American rail system, mainly through major changes to Class I railroads, the largest class by operating revenue.
AT&T Corporation, commonly referred to as AT&T, 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.
Frontier West Virginia, Inc. is one of the original Bell Operating Companies and provides local telephone service in the U.S. state of West Virginia.
The Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic railroad, nicknamed Black Cinders & Ashes, ran from Claiborne, Maryland, to Ocean City, Maryland. It operated 87 miles (140.0 km) of center-line track and 15.6 miles (25.11 km) of sidings. Chartered in 1886, the railroad started construction in 1889 and cost $2.356 million ($2024=79,895,000).
