The Woodbury Telephone Company was a telephone company that served the

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...

towns of

Woodbury Woodbury may refer to: Geography Antarctica *Woodbury Glacier, a glacier on Graham Land, British Antarctic Territory Australia * Woodbury, Tasmania, a locality in Australia England * Woodbury, Bournemouth, an area in Dorset *Woodbury, East Devo ...

, Southbury,

Bethlehem Bethlehem (; ar, بيت لحم ; he, בֵּית לֶחֶם '' '') is a city in the central West Bank, Palestine, about south of Jerusalem. Its population is approximately 25,000,Amara, 1999p. 18.Brynen, 2000p. 202. and it is the capital o ...

, and parts of Roxbury and

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

. In 1997, Woodbury Telephone was acquired by

Southern New England Telecommunications Southern New England Telecommunications Corporation (SNET) started operations in 1986 as the holding company for The Southern New England Telephone Company. Prior to 1986, The Southern New England Telephone Company had been a minority holding of ...

. In 1998, SNET merged with

SBC Communications 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 Woodbury Telephone, the 75th largest independent telephone carrier in the United States, continued as a separate operating company under Southern New England Telephone. On June 1, 2007, the company was dissolved and merged all assets and operations into

Southern New England Telephone 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. History It started operations o ...

History

Woodbury Telephone began operation in the 1870s when a local businessman, Mr. Charles A. Stone visited the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition 1876 and realized the value of connecting his grain and feed store to the Southbury Railroad Station via the telephone. The company grew modestly and was incorporated in 1910 with Arthur D. Warner as its first President. The company continued in operation and upgraded from a manual switchboard to a direct dial system in 1955. As the service area grew considerably in the 1970s and 1980s the company deployed digital switching, fiber optic network architecture and in the 1990s it successfully introduced internet service with broadband access. At the time of its acquisition by SNET, the company had 19,000 lines.

Other historical notes

*Woodbury Telephone was the only local telephone operating company SBC/AT&T owned that had no roots in the original AT&T or

Alexander Graham Bell Alexander Graham Bell (, born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and Te ...

. *There were five other independent telephone companies that served parts of Connecticut and were bought by SNET: Lebanon (1912), East Haven (1925), Collinsville (1939), Sharon (1943) and Huntington (1948).

References

{{Reflist Frontier Communications Former AT&T subsidiaries Communications in Connecticut American companies established in 1870 Telecommunications companies disestablished in 2007 2007 mergers and acquisitions Woodbury, Connecticut Defunct companies based in Connecticut Defunct telecommunications companies of the United States