Pacific Bell

The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company was the name of the Bell System's telephone operations in California. It gained in size by acquiring smaller telephone companies along the Pacific coast, such as Sunset Telephone & Telegraph in 1917. As it grew, it built and occupied San Francisco's Pacific Telephone Building^[1] on New Montgomery Street, described as a "monument to western progress and foresight"^[2]. Purchases extended Pacific Telephone's territory into Oregon, Washington, and northern Idaho; on July 1, 1961, however, those operations were split off to become Pacific Northwest Bell. Entering into the 1980s, Pacific Telephone had assets valued at $14.5 billion, making it the biggest of any of the 21 Bells AT&T wholly owned, which also made Pacific Telephone the "crown jewel" of the operating companies.^[3] However, Pacific Telephone was one of the least profitable Bells, due to very tough local telephone regulations in California.

Prior to the AT&T breakup in 1984, AT&T held 89.8% of Pacific Telephone. After the breakup, The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company changed its name to Pacific Bell Telephone Company and was often referred to as PacBell.

Pacific Bell has been owner of Nevada Bell, which is the reason that it was omitted from the Modification of Final Judgment, which broke up the Bell System.

Mergers

In 1997, Pacific Telesis Group was acquired by SBC Communications, and 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 Pacific Bell". In late 2002, the companies were rebranded again as simply "SBC". Meanwhile, employees of SBC working in California who support SBC's non-regulated services and/or services provided both within and outside California were transferred to other SBC subsidiaries, like "Pacific Telesis Shared Services" and "SBC Operations, Inc." However, for legal and regulatory purposes, employees supporting local regulated services were still employed by "Pacific Bell Telephone Company dba SBC California ("SBC California")" which is the SBC subsidiary that provides regulated local exchange carrier telephone services within the franchise territory in California.

On November 18, 2005, SBC completed its acquisition of AT&T Corp. to form AT&T Inc. Pacific Bell is now known as Pacific Bell Telephone Company d/b/a AT&T California.

References

1. ^ http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/story-of-the-week/2009/san-francisco-telephone-building.html
2. ^ http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist8/140telco.html
3. ^ Coll, Steve (1986). The Deal of the Century: The breakup of AT&T. New York: Atheneum. ISBN 978-0-689-11757-2.