The Southern New England Telephone Company (commonly referred to as SNETCo by its customers), doing business as Frontier Communications of Connecticut, is a local exchange carrier owned by

Frontier Communications Frontier Communications Parent, Inc. (known as Citizens Utilities Company until May 2000 and Citizens Communications Company until July 31, 2008) is an American telecommunications company. The company previously served primarily rural areas and s ...

History

It started operations on January 28, 1878 as the District Telephone Company of New Haven. It was the founder of the first telephone exchange, as well as the world's first telephone book. Since its inception, SNET has held a monopoly on most of the telephone services in the state of Connecticut; the only remaining exceptions are the

Greenwich Greenwich ( , ,) is a town in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated east-southeast of Charing Cross. Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich ...

and Byram exchanges where

Verizon New York The New York Telephone Company (NYTel) was organized in 1896, taking over the New York City operations of the American Bell Telephone Company. Predecessor companies The Telephone Company of New York was formed under franchise in 1876. The princ ...

provides telephone service. Southern New England Telephone Company - 1969 Logo

SNET and

Cincinnati Bell Cincinnati Bell, doing business as Altafiber (typeset as altafiber), is a regional telecommunications service provider based in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. It provides landline telephone, fiber-optic Internet, and IPTV services through ...

were the only two companies in the old

Bell System 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 one hundr ...

in which the old AT&T only held a minority stake; by 1983, AT&T's stake was only 19.6 percent. Therefore, both were considered independents rather than

Bell Operating Companies 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 one hundr ...

Sale to SBC

SNET was purchased for $4.4 billion in 1998 by SBC Communications, which subsequently purchased the old AT&T, taking its name as the "new" AT&T. Under AT&T, SNET was known as AT&T Connecticut. In 2006, AT&T merged the operations of SNET into

AT&T Teleholdings AT&T Teleholdings, Inc., formerly known as Ameritech Corporation (and before that American Information Technologies Corporation), is an American telecommunications company that arose out of the 1984 AT&T divestiture. Ameritech was one of the se ...

, formerly Ameritech, making it a subsidiary of the latter. On June 1, 2007, the operations of

Woodbury Telephone 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. ...

were merged into SNET.

Sale to Frontier

On October 24, 2014,

completed its purchase of AT&T's Connecticut operations, including Southern New England Telephone and

SNET America 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 ...

, for $2 billion. The company began doing business as Frontier Communications of Connecticut. It is the second former unit of the

to be acquired by Frontier, the first being

Frontier West Virginia Frontier West Virginia, Inc. is one of the original Bell Operating Companies and provides Plain old telephone service, local telephone service in the U.S. state of West Virginia. History The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of West Virgin ...

(originally C&P Telephone of West Virginia) which was purchased from

Verizon Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas ...

in 2010.

External links

History – University of Connecticut Libraries
*

References

{{AT&T Spinoffs Frontier Communications Bell System Telecommunications companies established in 1878 Telecommunications companies of the United States Communications in Connecticut Companies based in New Haven, Connecticut 1878 establishments in Connecticut

History

Sale to SBC

Sale to Frontier

See also

External links

References