GTE
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|
| Public | |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Fate | Merged with Bell Atlantic |
| Successor | Verizon Communications |
| Founded | 1918 |
| Defunct | 2000 |
| Headquarters | Stamford, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Products | Telephone, internet, television |
| Parent | Verizon (2000-present) |
| Subsidiaries |
GTE Southwest Verizon California Verizon Florida Verizon North Verizon South Puerto Rico Telephone Hawaiian Telephone |
| Website | GTE.com |
GTE Corporation, formerly General Telephone & Electric 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 merged with Bell Atlantic; the combined company took the name Verizon.
The company was founded in 1918 as the Associated Telephone Utilities Company; it went bankrupt in 1933 during the Great Depression, and was reorganized as General Telephone in 1934. In 1991, it acquired the third largest independent, Continental Telephone (ConTel). It owned Automatic Electric, a telephone equipment supplier similar in many ways to Western Electric, and Sylvania Lighting, the only non-communications-oriented company under GTE ownership. GTE provided local telephone service to a large number of areas of the U.S. through operating companies, much as American Telephone & Telegraph provided local telephone service through its 22 Bell Operating Companies.
The company acquired BBN Planet, one of the earliest Internet service providers, in 1997. That division became known as GTE Internetworking, and was later spun off into the independent company Genuity (a name recycled from another Internet company GTE acquired in 1997) to satisfy Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requirements regarding the GTE-Bell Atlantic merger that created Verizon.
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Wikipedia