 |
Bell Operating
Companies
Official Regional Bell Operating Companies link:
http://www.bell.com/rbocs.htm*
*Note: bell.com has not been keeping their site
up-to-date, and reflects disused Bell Operating Company logos and company
information, as many of the various Bells have merged.
Web pages put together so far on the individual Bell Operating Companies:
Note:
As of January 1, 2012, there are only four Bell Operating Companies left:
AT&T, CenturyLink, Cincinnati Bell, and Verizon. AT&T and Bell South having merged, and Qwest
acquired by CenturyLink. We don't know of a central
source of information about the mergers and other changes. However, we did
receive some information as shown below at the end of
this page from Mark J Cuccia which does a very good job of updating us on what happened to the
Baby Bells after 1983. Also, click
HERE
to view a chart put
together by Freepress.net
showing the changes that have occurred in the Regional Bell
Operating Companies over the years. Also, it must be noted that the
landline assets that Verizon has divested to Frontier in the last few years are
not classified as being part of any RBOC, as frontier is an independent phone
company.
It makes you
wonder when the last Bell name will disappear - replaced by some abstract name
like Verizon and the last Bell logo will be replaced by some abstract symbol
which means nothing to those of us who remember the quality service that the
Bell name and logo represented for over 100 years... Remember when
AT&T was told by the courts that as of 1984 they could no longer use the
Bell name (except for Bell Labs) and they came up with the "death
star" logo? The Baby Bells weren't forced to change their logos but
some were quick to do so - and they didn't do much better at coming up with a
new one than AT&T did! The only companies that still use the Bell name
are
Bell Canada
and
Cincinnati Bell,
with Verizon using the Bell logo on payphones only.
The Porticus Centre has no personal
financial investment or employment in any of these companies.
DISCLAIMER: All logos shown below are trademarks of the
Regional Bell Operating Companies or others. These companies are not affiliated
with this web site. See
Trademarks and
Copyrights.
If you have photos of your local Bell
company's buildings or vans, trucks, etc., we will post them here for you.
Before the divestiture of the
BELL SYSTEM on January 1, 1984, there were 22 Bell Operating Companies owned by
AT&T:
Click on image above to enlarge
Click
HERE
for 1977 map of the Bell System
Click HERE for a
1974 map of the Bell System
Bell Telephone Company of Nevada
Is
managed by the RBOC
AT&T
West
Illinois Bell Telephone Company
Is
managed by the RBOC
AT&T Midwest
Indiana Bell Telephone Company
Is
managed by the RBOC
AT&T Midwest
Michigan Bell Telephone Company
Is
managed by the RBOC
AT&T Midwest
Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Company
(Mountain Bell)
Is
managed by the RBOC
CenturyLink
New England Telephone & Telegraph Company
Formerly managed by the RBOC NYNEX. Due to a merger, it is now managed by the
RBOC Bell Atlantic now known as
Verizon.
New Jersey Bell Telephone Company
Is
managed by the RBOC
Verizon.
Northwestern Bell Telephone Company
Is
managed by the RBOC
CenturyLink
Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company
Is
managed by the RBOC
CenturyLink
Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company
Is
managed by the RBOC
AT&T
West.
South Central Bell Telephone Company
Is
managed by the RBOC
AT&T South.
Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company
Is
managed by the RBOC
AT&T South
Southwestern Bell Telephone Company
Is
managed by the RBOC
AT&T Southwest
The Bell Telephone Company of
Pennsylvania
Is now
known as Bell Atlantic - Pennsylvania now known as
Verizon.
Is
managed by the RBOC Bell Atlantic now known as
Verizon.
The Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company
The Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company of
Maryland
Is now
known as Bell Atlantic - Maryland now known as
Verizon.
Is
managed by the RBOC Bell Atlantic now known as
Verizon.
The Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company of
Virginia
Is
managed by the RBOC Bell Atlantic now known as
Verizon.
The Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company of West
Virginia
Is
managed by the RBOC Bell Atlantic now known as
Verizon.
The Diamond State Telephone Company
Is
managed by the RBOC Bell Atlantic now known as
Verizon.
The New York Telephone Company
Formerly managed by the RBOC NYNEX. Due to a merger, it is now managed by the
RBOC Bell Atlantic now known as
Verizon.
The Ohio Bell Telephone Company
Is
managed by the RBOC
AT&T Midwest
Wisconsin Telephone Company
Is
managed by the RBOC
AT&T Midwest
1922 Postcard showing Wisconsin Telephone Company building in Racine,
Wisconsin. Contributed by Brad Morrison.
In addition to these afore-listed companies
AT&T also had partial ownership in the following four companies.
-
Bell Telephone Company
of Canada (Bell Canada) (AT&T owned 2% interest
before 1975)
-
Cincinnati Bell Telephone Company
(AT&T owned 27.8% interest before 1984)
-
Malheur Bell (Ontario,
Oregon)
-
Southern New England Bell Telephone Company, now known as
AT&T
Connecticut (AT&T owned 16.8% interest before
1984)
And Then Along Came
Divestiture . . .
Under the terms of the consent decree
signed by AT&T, the company was required to divest itself completely from
the ownership of all of these companies by January 1, 1984. These
Bell Operating Companies were then grouped together with at least two Bell
Operating Companies in each group to form seven "Regional Bell Operating
Companies" which is often abbreviated as "RBOCs". An
interesting look at the financial and other data related to the formation of the
"Holding Companies" can be viewed by clicking
HERE.
Above map courtesy of AT&T archives - Sheldon
Hochheiser, PRCRP
The original seven RBOCs were:
Ameritech was originally composed of these Bell
Operating Companies:
originally provided service to the states of:
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Michigan
- Ohio
- Wisconsin
-
 (merged in 2000 with GTE and is
now called Verizon)
Bell Atlantic was originally composed of these Bell
Operating Companies:
-
-
-
- The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Companies
(four separate Corporations -- with one president and a centralized
staff):
Bell Atlantic originally provided service to the states
of:
- Maryland
- Virginia
- West Virginia
- Washington D.C.
BellSouth was originally (and still is) composed of
these Bell Operating Companies:
BellSouth originally provided service to the states of:
- North Carolina
- South Carolina
- Georgia
- Florida
- Alabama
- Louisiana
- Mississippi
- Tennessee
- Kentucky
-
 (merged in 1997 with Bell Atlantic - now
called Verizon)
Nynex was originally composed of these two Bell
Operating Companies:
-
-
(also operated in one or two eastern counties of
Connecticut. The rest of Connecticut was SNET, an independent company
(now owned by SBC)
Nynex originally provided service to the states
of:
- New York
- Maine
- Massachusetts
- New Hampshire
- Vermont
- Rhode Island
Pacific Telesis Group was originally composed of
these Bell Operating Companies:
-
-
(not listed in Appendix A of
the Modified Final Judgement)
Pacific Telesis Group originally provided service
to the states of:
NOTE: Bell of NV similar to Diamond
State - so small it was
managed by Pac. Tel. Each of those two small companies [also C&P of
Washington DC] was a separate corporation for regulatory purposes.
Southwestern Bell Corporation was originally
composed of this Bell Operating Company:
Southwestern Bell Corporation originally provided
service to the states of:
- Texas
- Oklahoma
- Kansas
- Missouri
- Arkansas
US West was originally composed of these three
Bell Operating Companies:
US West originally provided service to the states
of:
- Washington
- Oregon
- Malheur
Bell (
- Montana
- North Dakota
- South Dakota
- Minnesota
- Idaho
- Iowa
- Wyoming
- Nevada
- Nebraska
- Utah
- Colorado
- Arizona
- New Mexico
* SBC dropped the Southwestern
Bell, Pacific Bell, Pacific Telesis, and Ameritech names on December 10,
2002. Click HERE to read a
newspaper article on this change in SBC. In November 2005, SBC
Communications, Inc. purchased AT&T Corp.
The seven RBOCs were granted the right to:
- Provide local service
- Publish Yellow Pages directories
- Provide Directory Assistance services
- Use the
Bell symbol
- Direct Bell Communications Research (Bellcore)
[now called
Telcordia],
research and development facilities
The corporate changes that have taken place since then are
a bit confusing, but we have a chart which helps sum it up
pretty well. Click
HERE to view his chart.
The following was sent by Paul Wills.
It's a satire on what the new Baby Bells were
to be called after divestiture of the Bell System.
Click on the image below for enlarged view as PDF file.
Some other satire names given to the newly
formed Baby Bells are:
-
US West = US Worst
-
Taco Bell is what they called Telmex after
Southwestern Bell purchased an interest in it when it was privatized. (thanks
to Roger Conklin for this info.)
-
Bell Atlantic = Bell Frantic. "And
before that, when it was known as New Jersey Bell, I called it 'New
Jersey Dumb-Bell'" (thanks to Fred Dieckmann for this info.)
The
following information was sent by Mark J Cuccia.
"This is something was posted to misc.transport.road in
a recent HUGE thread about
"Bell" and "Standard Oil" and the parallels of their development,
history, rise and power, and what has happened since each was dis-membered
by the Federal Govt. In this post, I
summarize what has happened and current developments of the
dismembered elements of the one-time Bell System. Maybe this will help out
in keeping track...
Mark J. Cuccia
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 04 Sep 2000 18:52:44 -0500
From: Mark J. Cuccia
To: [email protected]
Newsgroups: misc.transport.road
Subject: (Re) BOC Names and Logos - and a re-capitulation
of what has become of the Bell
System entities
Joe Isham ([email protected]) wrote:
> Mark J Cuccia ([email protected]) wrote
>> Southwestern Bell Telephone Company - the
original and ONLY BOC of
>> Southwestern Bell Corporation in 1984, seems to
be the ONLY member
>> of the SBC family still using the
"Bell" logo
> They have dropped the Bell logo as of August.
Currently SWB uses
> just the words "Southwestern Bell" and the
"SBC Global Network"
> logo.
Sad! :(
Yes, I just took a look at the SBC
("touchtone-star" and figure-8/sine-wave "swoosh") Coporate
website, www.sbc.com, which has links to:
- Ameritech (full circle oval "swoosh"),
- Southwestern Bell (SBC Corporate logo),
- Nevada Bell, Pacific Bell, (it looks like the 1984 =>
SBC-takeover
Pacific*Telesis corporate for Pac*Bell/CA and NV*Bell
doesn't "exist" at all anymore;
both NV*Bell and Pac*Bell use the "touchtone-star" in
a square, like a touchtone key/button), - and
"semi-BOC" SNET/CT (triple concentric semi-circle/oval "swooshes")
NONE of them, neither corporate, nor the "BOCs"
that it holds, use the
"Bell" logo of 1970->today.
(20% of Bell Canada, which itself holds a lot of Canadian
telco operations or has joint ventures
with MTS in Manitoba, was purchased by
Ameritech, now part of SBC, about two years ago; and Bell Canada stopped
using ANY version of a "Bell" logo circa 1975)
But SBC seems to be the ONLY remaining entity of the
1984-RBOC corporations that still
lists individual names of other RBOCs it bought
out or their operating companies! Every other RBOC (or merged RBOCs)
have consolidated all of their BOC/local names, at least for "public"
marketing purposes.
So, here is a re-capitualtion of the various different
parts of the (at one time) Bell
System, as they now exist today:
- SBC , and Bell Canada (described above)
- VeriZon (once known as Bell Atlantic/NYNEX, and GTE);
VeriZon name to be used in the US, Telus (from GTE and AGT)
name to be used in Canada; I don't
know about GTE/VeriZon operations outside of the
continental US or Canada - such as Hawaii, Saipan, Dominican Republic
-- if they intend to hold on to their shares/operations or spin-them-off,
and if they do intend to keep them, is the VeriZon name going
to eventually replace the GTE-Hawaiian Telephone name, the GTE-Micronesia
name, or the (GTE)Codetel name ???; GTE has been selling-off
/ spinning-off many of its smaller US local telco operations
in preparation for GTE + BA/NYNEX = VeriZon)
- BellSouth , Qwest/US-West:
The former Southern Bell and South Central Bell names no
longer exist (at least for
"public" marketing purposes)... likewise, Mountain Bell, Northwestern
Bell, and Pacific Northwest Bell names disappeared into (corporate)
US-West about ten years ago, but US-West did adopt the "Bell"
logo for both corporate, and for the "public" BOC name when it dropped
the local names...
In recent years, Frontier/Global-Crossing, and (LCI)Qwest
seemed to be courting BOTH BellSouth
and US-West. Qwest has only recently since taken
over US-West, and the "Bell" logo is gone too. BellSouth DOES continue
to use the "Bell" logo (it appeared on the corporate logo when
in 1995, South Central Bell and Southern Bell names were consolidated
into the corporate BellSouth name)...
I only recently discovered that BellSouth does own
something like 20% of Qwest.
BellSouth's LD-resale of 1+ coin at BellSouth payphones and
its 1-800-BELL-SOU(th) card/operator services it is "pushing" (which
is _NOT_ the REAL BellSouth "TOPS" LATA operator/card services)
is actually a resale of Qwest (but I don't know who
you get on 1-800-BELLSOU(th) from (former)
US-West territory, due to the gov't stipulations
on the US-West/Qwest merger.
Also, BellSouth and US-West seemed to have become _VERY_
friendly and "similar"
to/with _each_other_ in the past three years.
If there is ever a "consolidation" of Qwest/US-West
with BellSouth, which name will
continue to be used? Will the "Bell" logo still be sued?
If it is BellSOUTH and US-_WEST_ merged, would this be SBC? :-)
(i.e., _South_ from BellSouth + _West_ from US-West giving
SouthWestern Bell !! :-)
And another point for telco historian/teckies -- BellSouth
and US-West never really had _ANY_
Panel or #1XB local switching, EXCEPT for
LIMITED Panel (only two central offices in Atlanta installed in the
late 1920's or early 1930's), and Panel/#1XB in the Seattle Metro area
when Pacific NW Bell was still part of Pacific Tel (& Tel).
In the early 1960's, Pac-NW-Bell was split out of Pacific
Tel (& Tel) as its own unique
AT&T-owned BOC (similar to SCBell splitting from So.Bell
in the late 1960's), and in 1984, Pac-NW-Bell was put under US-West,
now Qwest...
Well, there was some Panel/#1XB in Omaha NE (actually the
VERY first Panel switch in the
US was in Omaha), and that was NWBell->USWest->
Qwest.
But Panel/#1XB _flourished_ in more urban metro areas of
NYNEX/BA, Ameritech, the
SF-Oakland Bay area (Pac*Bell), St.Louis MO and Kan.Cy
MO (and I would guess KC-Kansas) which would be SWBell...
- Semi-BOC Cincinnati Bell (a "Broadwing"
Company) still has the name "Bell"
as well as the 1970's->today "Bell" logo: www.cincinnatibell.com
- AT&T
- Lucent Technologies (which includes Bell Labs)
- Telcordia (was once known as Bellcore, Bell
Communications Research, formed in
1983 as the Central Services Organization out of the Bell System,
to be a "central point-of-contact" and "co-ordinating" unit,
owned equally by all seven 1984 RBOCs, each owning
1/7th of Bellcore. Bellcore started out in
1983/84 with "permanent" employees who came from
the BOCs - mostly Jersey Bell, NYTel, Bell of PA; AT&T-WECO;
AT&T-Long-Lines, AT&T-HQ, and Bell Labs; The BOC/RBOCs,
except for Cincinnati Bell and SNET/CT
which didn't really own any parts of Bellcore,
had "rotating / tour-of-duty" employees at Bellcore; Bellcore/Telcordia's
main offices/locations are all over NJ, the biggest
being in Piscataway NJ in offices once used by AT&T/WECO/Bell-Labs; Bellcore
used the "Bell" logo until a few years ago when SAIC
bought out the shares from the RBOCs and then changed the name to Telcordia
Technologies; SAIC = Scientific Applications International Corporation.
Bellcore/Telcordia still does the TRA - Traffic Routing Administration
which it took over from AT&T as of 1984; Bellcore, prior
to name change to Telcordia, used to be the NANPA - North American
Numbering Plan Administration; NANPA went over to Lockheed-Martin
in late 1997, but then went to Warburg-Pincus' Neustar in
late 1999; Bellcore/Telcordia still does co-ordination for other aspects
of North American telephony/industry; the Telcordia logo is two
"swoosy" letter 'Ts'; SAIC also has the contract for the Canadian
Numbering Administration for Canada-specific
numbering/dialing co-ordination, but the CNA
still has to work closely with Telcordia-TRA
and Neustar-NANPA, and other US/Canada telco industry bodies,
some which were formed out of what the old Bell System did).
Some other bodies formed out of the old Bell System
include:
- NECA (National Exchange Carriers' Association) in
Whippany NJ (in an old Bell Labs /
WECO / AT&T building); - and ATIS (the
Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, which
manages the industry standards forums) located in DC.
US(I)TA, the United States (Independent)
Telephone Association is what the old
industry assocication body for the non-Bell telcos in the US, and
not really part of the Bell System, altho' they did interface with AT&T
for technical/standards inter-operations... In 1984, the 'I' for Independent
was dropped, and membership was extended to the (R)BOCs. USTA
still is in existance, located in DC.
SO.....
It appears that only BellSouth (itself, and not Qwest/US-West),
and (semi-BOC) Cincinnati Bell are the ONLY former
members of what was once known as "The
Bell System" that still use the "Bell" logo of the
1970's->forward, although some of SBC's holdings still include the
"Bell" word in their names (Pacific, Nevada, Southwestern), while
everything else using the "Bell" name
and/or logo has disappeared. (Well, there's
still the "Bell" name in Bell Canada and its operations north-of-the-border...)
Yes, it looks like "Bell" has gone the way of
"Standard"...(Standard Oil). While
growing up in the 1960's/70's here in New Orleans, I'd occasionally
heard the name "Standard Oil" referenced, but I really hadn't
known that Esso (including Enco) and Humble were really the "original"
Standard Oil (of New Jersey). Of course, I did see roadmaps issued
by American/Amoco which had "Standard" written in the r/w/b oval/torch/flame,
and maps issued by Chevron which had "Standard" written
above the r/w/b chevrons... and it always confused me.
BTW, note who most of the more dominant "Baby
Standards" used (patriotic)
all-American Red/White/Blue in their logos:
Esso/Enco/Humble/etc => Exxon (S.O.NJ), taking over
Mobil
Chevron/SoCal/etc => Chevron (S.O.CA)
Mobil/Socony-Vacuum => Mobil (S.O.NY), taken over by
Exxon
Amoco/PanAm/Utoco/American/etc=>Amoco (S.O.IN), being
taken over by BP
Sohio/Boron (S.O.OH), being taken over by BP
IMO, whether others think it might even be a
"good" think, to ME, it is a
SAD DAY to think that future generations may never know of service-stations
/ gasoline products / roadmaps / etc. that aren't known
as "Standard" (or any derivative)... and similarly a SAD day to
lose the "Bell" name and/or logo for a company providing telephone
service! :(
MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__HOME:__(USA)__Tel:_CHestnut-1-2497
WORK:[email protected]|4710-Wright-Road|__(+1-504-241-2497)
Tel:UNiversity-5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New-Orleans-28__|fwds-on-no-answr-to
Fax:UNiversity-5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail
|
(now
part of 
(now part of
(now part of
(now part of
(merged in 2000 with Qwest,
and Qwest was acquired in 2011 by 