RBOCs

Regional Bell Operating Companies

In 1981 Judge Harold Greene issued his consent decree which broke up AT&T and restricted AT&T to long distance service. AT&T got everything it wanted, and massive parties were thrown at AT&T to celebrate. The new RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) were as follows:

• NYNEX: New York and New England
• Bell Atlantic: middle-Atlantic states
• BellSouth: southeastern US
• Ameritech: midwest US
• Southwestern Bell: southwest US including Missouri
• US West: the plains states and the Rockies, Washington
• Pacific Telesis: California and Oregon

Once the dot com buying frenzy started, with WorldCom buying everything under the sun, Sprint starting PCS, Deutsche Telekom flirting with buying Sprint, and telcos like Global Crossing, XO, et al. becoming serious contenders, the RBOCs panicked.

Solution: consolidation. Bell Atlantic bought NYNEX, along with a couple of wireless companies, and renamed itself Verizon (they paid a consultant an obscene sum of money for the name). Qwest, a smaller backbone provider, bought Frontier (a small long distance company) and then bought US West. Southwestern Bell changed its name to SBC, moved its headquarters from St Louis to San Antonio, and bought PacTel and Ameritech.

BellSouth bought no one, and has been, according to the talking heads, a ripe candidate for purchase.