Nevada Bell Telephone Company, originally Bell Telephone Company of Nevada, is a

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

telephone provider and it was the

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 ...

's telephone provider in Nevada. It only provides telephone services to 30% of the state, essentially all of the state outside

Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

, where service is provided by

Lumen Technologies Lumen Technologies, Inc. (formerly CenturyLink, Inc.) is an American telecommunications company headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, which offers communications, network services, security, cloud solutions, voice and managed services through ...

. Nevada Bell spent nearly all of its history as a subsidiary of

Pacific Bell The Pacific Bell Telephone Company (Pac Bell) is a telephone company that provides telephone service in California. The company is owned by AT&T through AT&T Teleholdings, and, though separate, is now marketed as “AT&T”. The company has ...

, which is the reason Nevada Bell was not listed in Judge Harold H. Greene's

Modification of Final Judgment In United States telecommunication law, the Modification of Final Judgment (MFJ) is the August 24, 1982 consent decree concerning the antitrust lawsuit of January 14, 1949, ''United States vs. Western Electric Company and American Telephone and Tel ...

, starting the

breakup of the Bell System The Bell System held a virtual monopoly over telephony infrastructure in the United States since the early 20th century until January 8, 1982. This divestiture of the Bell Operating Companies was initiated in 1974 when the United States Departme ...

History

Nevada Bell traces its history to 1906, when Pacific Telephone and Telegraph forerunner of Pacific Bell bought the Sunset Telephone and Telegraph Company, one of several early telephone companies in Nevada. In 1913, Pacific Telephone transferred its Nevada operations to the newly formed Bell Telephone Company of Nevada. After the 1984 breakup, its legal name was shortened to Nevada Bell (its popular name for the better part of its history), and it became an operating company of Pacific Telesis alongside Pacific Bell.

Mergers

In 1997, Pacific Telesis Group was acquired by

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 ...

. Although the Pacific Telesis corporate name disappeared fairly quickly, SBC continued to operate the local telephone companies separately under their original names. In September 2001, SBC rebranded the telephone company "SBC Nevada Bell". In late 2002, the Nevada Bell name disappeared altogether when SBC rebranded all of its operating companies as simply "SBC". However, for legal and regulatory purposes, employees supporting local regulated services were still employed by "Nevada Bell dba SBC Nevada", which was the SBC subsidiary that provided regulated local telephone services within the franchise territory in Nevada. On November 18, 2005, SBC completed its acquisition of AT&T Corp. to form AT&T Inc., at which point Nevada Bell began doing business as AT&T Nevada.

References

AT&T subsidiaries Bell System Companies based in Reno, Nevada Communications in Nevada 1913 establishments in Nevada Telecommunications companies established in 1913 American companies established in 1913 {{US-telecom-company-stub