BellSouth, LLC (stylized as ''BELLSOUTH'' and formerly known as BellSouth Corporation) was an American
telecommunications
Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...
holding company based in
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...
. BellSouth was one of the seven original
Regional Bell Operating Companies after the
U.S. Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the U.S. government that oversees the domestic enforcement of federal laws and the administration of justice. It is equi ...
forced the
American Telephone & Telegraph Company to divest itself of its regional telephone companies on January 1, 1984.
In a merger announced on March 5, 2006, and executed on December 29, 2006,
AT&T Inc. (originally SBC Communications) acquired BellSouth for approximately $86 billion (1.325 shares of AT&T for each share of BellSouth). The merger also consolidated ownership of
Cingular Wireless and
Yellowpages.com, both of which were joint ventures between BellSouth and AT&T.
With the merger completed, wireless services previously offered by Cingular Wireless were then offered under the AT&T name, and
BellSouth Telecommunications
BellSouth Telecommunications, LLC was an operating company of AT&T that serves the southeastern United States. It consists of the former operations of Southern Bell and South Central Bell.
BellSouth Telecommunications was a subsidiary of ...
(a subsidiary of a
Bell Operating Company
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 100 years f ...
) began doing business as AT&T Southeast.
BellSouth was the last of the Regional Bell Operating Companies to keep its original corporate name after the 1984 AT&T breakup, as well as the last one to retain the Bell logo as part of its main corporate identity.
BellSouth also operated in Latin America in Argentina, Australia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. BellSouth operated in New Zealand under the name of BellSouth New Zealand Limited from 1993 until 1998 when it was acquired by Vodafone to become
Vodafone New Zealand
One New Zealand (formerly known as Vodafone New Zealand) is a New Zealand telecommunications company. One NZ is the largest wireless carrier in New Zealand, accounting for 38% of the country's mobile share market in 2021.
Corporate history ...
. It competed against
Telecom New Zealand
Spark New Zealand Limited is a New Zealand telecommunications and digital services company providing fixed-line telephone services, mobile phone services, broadband, and digital technology services (including cloud, security, digital transfor ...
. Its operations in Australia were under the name of BellSouth Australia Pty Limited. All of Bellsouth's operations in Latin America were acquired by
Telefonica in late 2004 for nearly $5.85 billion, and became
Movistar
Movistar () is a major telecommunications provider owned by Telefónica, operating in Spain and Hispanic American countries. It is the largest provider of landline, broadband, Mobile telephony, mobile services, and pay television (Movistar Plus+ ...
.
Organization and services
As part of the breakup of the old
AT&T
AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...
during 1984, BellSouth was formed as the holding company for the telephone operating companies in the southern portion of the old
Bell System
The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the AT&T Corporation, American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America fo ...
—Atlanta-based
Southern Bell
Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company was a Bell Operating Company serving the Southeastern United States of Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina. It also previously covered the states of Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, M ...
and
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Jefferson County, Alabama, Jefferson County. The population was 200,733 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List ...
-based
South Central Bell. The creation of BellSouth, in effect, reunited most telephone service in the Southeastern United States. Southern Bell had been the Bell System operating company for the entire Southeast until 1967, when the western portion of its service territory became South Central Bell.
BellSouth formed a shared services company, BellSouth Services, to provide centralized functions such as
engineering
Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...
and
information technology
Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...
to Southern Bell and South Central Bell. Services provided in the BellSouth operating area include telephone and
DSL
Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric di ...
/
Dial-up Internet
Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telepho ...
services in the states of
Alabama
Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...
,
Florida
Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...
,
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States
Georgia may also refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Georgia (name), a list of pe ...
,
Kentucky
Kentucky (, ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the ...
,
Louisiana
Louisiana ( ; ; ) is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It borders Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, and Mississippi to the east. Of the 50 U.S. states, it ranks 31st in area and 25 ...
,
Mississippi
Mississippi ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Louisiana to the s ...
,
North Carolina
North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...
,
South Carolina
South Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders North Carolina to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, and Georgia (U.S. state), Georg ...
, and
Tennessee
Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...
.
Satellite television
Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location.ITU Radio Regulations, Section IV. Radio Stations and Systems ...
service was provided as a partnership with
DirecTV
DirecTV, LLC is an American Multichannel television in the United States, multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital Satellite television, s ...
.
Cable television
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...
(often via
MMDS
Multichannel multipoint distribution service (MMDS), formerly known as broadband radio service (BRS) and also known as wireless cable, is a wireless telecommunications technology, used for general-purpose broadband networking or, more commonly ...
) was provided in limited markets as BellSouth Entertainment (as part of the
Americast venture).
In 1992, BellSouth merged South Central Bell and BellSouth Services into Southern Bell, which changed its name to
BellSouth Telecommunications
BellSouth Telecommunications, LLC was an operating company of AT&T that serves the southeastern United States. It consists of the former operations of Southern Bell and South Central Bell.
BellSouth Telecommunications was a subsidiary of ...
. This created a single operating company in the BellSouth territory, and fully reunited Southern Bell and South Central Bell. However, BellSouth continued using the Southern Bell name in the eastern portion of its territory and the South Central Bell name in the western portion until 1998, when it adopted BellSouth as the sole customer-facing brand.
The company maintained its largest operation centers in Atlanta and Birmingham. Region-wide headquarters operations were also primarily in Atlanta and Birmingham. Statewide operations centers were located in Birmingham, Miami, Atlanta, Louisville, New Orleans, Jackson, Charlotte, Columbia, and Nashville. BellSouth Mobility was based in Atlanta, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama.
In August 1998, BellSouth launched FastAccess DSL, their
broadband
In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...
service provided through a
DSL
Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric di ...
connection, initially launched in the
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...
,
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...
,
Charlotte,
Miami
Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...
/
Ft. Lauderdale,
Jacksonville
Jacksonville ( ) is the most populous city proper in the U.S. state of Florida, located on the Atlantic coast of North Florida, northeastern Florida. It is the county seat of Duval County, Florida, Duval County, with which the City of Jacksonv ...
,
New Orleans
New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...
and
Raleigh
Raleigh ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, second-most populous city in the state (after Charlotte, North Carolina, Charlotte) ...
/
Durham areas. Eventually, it became available in all of BellSouth's service area.
Toward its end, BellSouth realigned itself in two important areas,
wireless
Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information (''telecommunication'') between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided transm ...
and
broadband
In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...
. In 2001, they merged
BellSouth Mobility, their wireless enterprise, with
SBC's wireless services, and took a 40% stake in the resulting company,
Cingular Wireless. The new company provided a large percentage of BellSouth's revenue. This joint venture continued after SBC purchased the
old AT&T
AT&T Corporation, an abbreviation for its former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was an American telecommunications company that provided voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to busi ...
and rebranded as
AT&T Inc. Continued increase of
broadband
In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...
penetration and applications in the consumer market was a key strategy to the company. These activities were being funded in part by the sale of
Latin America
Latin America is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geogr ...
operations.
BellSouth became the first "Baby Bell" that did not operate
pay telephones. By 2003, BellSouth's payphone operation was discontinued because it had become too unprofitable, most likely due to the increased availability of cell phones.
Cincinnati Bell has taken BellSouth's place for payphones in northern BellSouth territory; independents have set in further south.
BellSouth's main operating units at its end were the Communications Group, Domestic Wireless, and Advertising and Publishing. The communications group operated two wholly-owned subsidiaries,
BellSouth Telecommunications Inc. (BST) and
BellSouth Long Distance, Inc. (BSLD). The main marketing groups for the communications group were consumer, small business, large business, and interconnection (wholesale services). The communications group provided wireline communications services, including local exchange, network access, intraLATA long-distance services, and Internet services, as well as long-distance services.
The advertising and publishing group was responsible for printing and distributing telephone books, selling advertising, and operating online electronic directories.
The BellSouth–SBC/AT&T relationship went further than just Cingular Wireless. Both companies also co-owned yellowpages.com (formerly RealPages.com and SmartPages.com).
BellSouth licensed its trademark to US Electronics, which produced telephones under the BellSouth brand. It also previously maintained a history page at bellsouth.com/servicemarks, which displayed its former and recent BellSouth logo usage.
BellSouth stops displaying caller ID from Sprint customers
As of January 1, 2006, BellSouth customers no longer receive
caller ID
Caller identification (Caller ID) is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call is ...
information from Sprint PCS customers. Any incoming call originating from a
Sprint PCS cell phone will usually display the City, State format on the caller ID display instead of the name or business name associated with that number. Based on a 1996 agreement between Sprint and BellSouth, it is likely that this is a result of a ten-year contract. In 2003, Sprint sued BellSouth for $20 million as a result of Sprint claiming Bellsouth violated a 1996 contract by not providing Sprint caller-identification information to BellSouth customers.
Similar caller ID "deals" have been left to the consumer to fight either with their own carrier or through government regulatory commissions for what they should have displayed on their caller ID device. In 2002, Sprint and
SBC Communications
AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the ...
could not come to an agreement on fees charged to carriers to look up the caller name information.
Alleged NSA cooperation
In 2006, ''
USA Today
''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...
'' published an article which erroneously claimed that three of the largest
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
carriers, including BellSouth, had been supplying calling records to the
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
for all international and domestic calls. This data, the article claimed, is being used to create, "the
largest database ever assembled."
On May 16, 2006, BellSouth released a retraction claiming that no contract with the NSA existed and that they had never provided information such as calling records to the NSA.
''
USA Today
''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...
'' posted an update on June 30, 2006, stating that:
"On May 15, BellSouth said it could not categorically deny participation in the program until it had conducted a detailed investigation. BellSouth said that internal review concluded that the company did not contract with the NSA or turn over calling records."USA Today: June 30, 2006 – A Note to our Readers
usatoday.com
See also
*
BellSouth Telecommunications
BellSouth Telecommunications, LLC was an operating company of AT&T that serves the southeastern United States. It consists of the former operations of Southern Bell and South Central Bell.
BellSouth Telecommunications was a subsidiary of ...
*
Cingular Wireless
*
References
External links
*
Bell Operating Companies porticus.org
biz.yahoo.com
biz.yahoo.com ''Yahoo! Finance'', March 5, 2006, Harry Weber
{{National Medal of Arts recipients 1990s
AT&T subsidiaries
Bell System
Telecommunications companies of the United States
Companies based in Atlanta
1983 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state)
Telecommunications companies established in 1983
American companies established in 1983
2006 mergers and acquisitions
2006 disestablishments in Georgia (U.S. state)
Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange