O'Connell bought the Richland Center Telephone Company for over $30,000 in Wisconsin. In 1918, Wisconsin public utility accountants Sigurd L. Prior to GTE's merger with Bell Atlantic, GTE also maintained an interactive television service joint-venture called GTE mainStreet (sometimes also called mainStreet USA) as well as an interactive entertainment and video game publishing operation, GTE Interactive Media. In the Caribbean, CONTEL purchased several major stakes in the newly independent countries of the British West Indies (namely in Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago). As such, GTE's successor, Verizon Communications, was the only foreign telecommunications company with a greater than 20% interest in a Canadian carrier, until Verizon completely divested itself of its shares in 2004. When BC Tel merged with Telus (the name given the privatized Alberta Government Telephones (AGT)) to create BCT.Telus, GTE's Canadian subsidiaries were merged into the new parent, making it the second-largest telecommunications carrier in Canada. When foreign ownership restrictions on telecommunications companies were introduced, GTE's ownership was grandfathered. GTE operated in Canada via large interests in subsidiary companies such as BC Tel and Quebec-TГ©lГ©phone. 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. The company acquired BBN Planet, one of the earliest Internet service providers, in 1997. through operating companies, much as American Telephone & Telegraph provided local telephone service through its 22 Bell Operating Companies. GTE provided local telephone service to many areas of the U.S. 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. In 1991, it acquired the third largest independent, Continental Telephone (ConTel). The Wisconsin-based Associated Telephone Utilities Company was founded in 1926 it went bankrupt in 1933 during the Great Depression, and was reorganized as General Telephone in 1934.

The company operated from 1926, with roots tracing further back than that, until 2000, when it was acquired by Bell Atlantic the combined company took the name Verizon. GTE Corporation, formerly General Telephone & Electronics Corporation (1955вЂ“1982), was the largest independent telephone company in the United States during the days of the Bell System.

For other uses, see GTE (disambiguation).

Fallout 3 old olney underground key