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.
The Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC) are the result of United States v. AT&T, the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust suit against the former American Telephone & Telegraph Company. On January 8, 1982, AT&T Corp. settled the suit and agreed to divest its local exchange service operating companies. Effective January 1, 1984, AT&T Corp.'s local operations were split into seven independent Regional Bell Operating Companies known as Baby Bells.
BellSouth, LLC is 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.
Cincinnati Bell 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 Cincinnati Bell Telephone and Hawaiian Telcom, which are the incumbent local exchange carriers for the Cincinnati and Dayton metropolitan areas and Hawaii. Other subsidiaries provide enterprise information technology services and long distance calling.
Rochester Telephone Corporation was a company that provided local telephone service to Rochester, New York. The company was founded in 1920 as a merger of Rochester Telephonic Exchange and Rochester Telephone Company. In 1995 the company became Frontier Corporation, trading on the NYSE under the FRO symbol. Ownership passed to Global Crossing in 1999, and then, in 2001, to Citizens Utilities Corporation, which later changed its name to Frontier Communications.
The breakup of the Bell System was mandated on January 8, 1982 by an agreed consent decree providing that AT&T Corporation would, as had been initially proposed by AT&T, relinquish control of the Bell Operating Companies that had provided local telephone service in the United States and Canada up until that point. This effectively took the monopoly that was the Bell System and split it into entirely separate companies that would continue to provide telephone service. AT&T would continue to be a provider of long-distance service, while the now-independent Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) would provide local service, and would no longer be directly supplied with equipment from AT&T subsidiary Western Electric.
The New York Telephone Company (NYTel) was organized in 1896, taking over the New York City operations of the American Bell Telephone Company.
BellSouth Telecommunications, LLC is an operating company of AT&T that serves the southeastern United States. It consists of the former operations of Southern Bell and South Central Bell.
Qwest Corporation is a Bell Operating Company owned by CenturyLink. It was formerly named U S WEST Communications, Inc. from 1991 to 2000, and also formerly named The Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company from 1911 to 1991. It includes the former operations of Malheur Bell, Northwestern Bell and Pacific Northwest Bell as well.
Frontier Communications Corporation is a telecommunications company in the United States. It was known as Citizens Utilities Company until May 2000 and Citizens Communications Company until July 31, 2008. The company previously served primarily rural areas and smaller communities, but now also serves several large metropolitan markets.
SBC Long Distance LLC is a long-distance telephone company owned by AT&T that does business as AT&T Long Distance. SBC Long Distance competes with other long-distance providers who provide service within some of the Bell Operating Company service boundaries of AT&T. SBC Long Distance is a separate subsidiary than AT&T Communications, the incumbent long-distance carrier for most of the country acquired in the SBC merger with AT&T.
SNET America, Inc. is a long-distance telephone company owned by Frontier Communications that serves Connecticut with customers in other states. It competes to provide long-distance service for SNET customers. SNET America was formed by Southern New England Telecommunications Corp. in 1993 to compete with other long-distance carriers within Connecticut. SNET America does business as Frontier Communications. It is not affiliated with Frontier Communications Online and Long Distance or Citizens Communications of America, the other core long-distance units of Frontier.
The Woodbury Telephone Company was a telephone company that served the Connecticut towns of Woodbury, Southbury, Bethlehem, and parts of Roxbury and Oxford. In 1997, Woodbury Telephone was acquired by Southern New England Telecommunications. In 1998, SNET merged with SBC Communications and Woodbury Telephone, the 75th largest independent telephone carrier in the United States, continued as a separate operating company under Southern New England Telephone.
YP Connecticut Information Services LLC, originally SNET Information Services, Inc., was the directory publishing arm of Southern New England Telecommunications. It is currently owned by YP Holdings and publishes telephone directories for Southern New England Telephone customers under the YP Real Yellow Pages name.
Americast was a cable alternative broadcast joint venture of five telephone companies: SBC, BellSouth Corporation, Ameritech Corporation, GTE Corporation and SNET. The Walt Disney Company's Disney Televenture subsidiary was a programming partner. No standard delivery technologies was chosen for Americast with cable, direct-broadcast satellite and microwave as options for partner companies to use.
Qwest Communications International, Inc. was a large 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, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
The Bell System was the system of companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by AT&T, which dominated the telephone services industry in North America for 100 years from its creation in 1877 until its demise in the early 1980s. The system of companies was often colloquially called Ma Bell, as it held a near-complete monopoly over telephone service in most areas of the United States and Canada. At the time of its breakup in the early 1980s, the Bell System had assets of $150 billion and employed over one million people.
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 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.
The Southern New England Telephone Company, doing business as Frontier Communications of Connecticut, is a local exchange carrier owned by Frontier Communications.
