Verizon Pennsylvania LLC, formerly traded as Bell of Pennsylvania, is the Bell Operating Company serving most of Pennsylvania. The company was founded in 1879 as Bell Telephone Company of Philadelphia, owned by National Bell Telephone Company, which later became American Bell.
The company is separate from Verizon North, which consists of former GTE-owned assets in rural Pennsylvania.
History
The company was founded in 1879 to serve Philadelphia. In 1907, the company changed its name to The Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania, a name under which it began to expand.
In April 1930, The company acquired Lehigh Telephone. During 1930, it also exchanged assets with Cumberland Valley Telephone Company in Dauphin, Mifflin, and Cumberland Counties. In 1932 Bell acquired properties of Clinton Telephone, which operated in portions of Lycoming and Clinton Counties. In 1944, it acquired Keystone Telephone Company of Philadelphia for $13.4 million.[1]
Throughout the 1980s to the first half of the 1990s, Bell of Pennsylvania, also called Pennsylvania Bell, kept its traditional identity. In 1994, Bell Atlantic started rebranding all its companies to Bell Atlantic-(state), so Bell of Pennsylvania became Bell Atlantic - Pennsylvania, Inc. In 2000, after the Bell Atlantic-GTE merger, the corporation changed its name to Verizon, and so Bell of Pennsylvania once again changed its name, this time to Verizon Pennsylvania, Inc.[citation needed]
In 2012, Verizon created a Delawarelimited liability company named Verizon Pennsylvania LLC. Verizon Pennsylvania, Inc., a Pennsylvania corporation, was then legally merged into the Delaware-based LLC.[2]
The company's headquarters in Philadelphia are shared with Verizon Delaware, an arrangement that has existed since the Bell System existed.[citation needed]