Verizon New England
Verizon Massachusetts Verizon Rhode Island | |
Formerly called | New England Telephone and Telegraph Company (1883-2000) |
Private (Subsidiary of Verizon) | |
Industry | Telecommunications |
Founded | 1883 |
Headquarters | Boston, Massachusetts, USA |
Area served | Massachusetts, Rhode Island |
Products | POTS, DSL, FiOS (FTTP) |
Parent |
American Bell (1883-1899) AT&T (1899-1983) NYNEX (1984-1997) Bell Atlantic/Verizon (1997-present) |
Website |
Verizon Massachusetts Verizon Rhode Island |
Verizon New England, Inc., formerly New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, more commonly known as New England Telephone, is a Bell Operating Company that serves most of Massachusetts and all of Rhode Island.[1]
History
New England Telephone served most of the New England area of the United States, including Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont as a part of the original AT&T for seven decades. After the Bell System divestiture, it merged with New York Telephone to form NYNEX in 1984. After 1994, the name was no longer officially publicly used (although it was still used internally for portions of operations).
Its slogan and jingle was "We're the one for you, New England. New England Telephone."
The company has no connection to an earlier New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, a short-lived company that dissolved in 1879, although at least through 1965 the legal business name of New England Telephone was The New England Telephone and Telegraph Company. It also had no connection to Southern New England Telephone (SNET) which covered Connecticut and small parts of New York.
NYNEX was acquired by Bell Atlantic in 1997 and began doing business under that name; however, New England Telephone retained its original corporate name. In 2000, Bell Atlantic bought GTE and changed its own name to Verizon. New England Telephone was then renamed Verizon New England, Inc.
On April 1, 2008, Verizon's operations in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont were sold to FairPoint Communications as Northern New England Telephone Operations and Telephone Operating Company of Vermont.
Verizon New England is headquartered at 185 Franklin Street in the Post Office Square area of Boston's Financial District.