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The Bell System was a trademark and service mark used by the U.S. telecommunications company American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) and its affiliated companies to co-brand their extensive circuit-switched telephone network and their affiliations with each other. The telephone system had a monopoly on the U.S. telephone market until its divestiture in 1984.

History

The Bell trademark (pictured right) used by both the AT&T corporation and the regional operating corporations from 1921 to 1939 to co-brand themselves under a single Bell System trademark would have the regional operating corporation's name where the "name of associated company" appears in this boilerplate version of the trademark.

A 1956 consent agreement limited AT&T to engaging in only activities related to a maximum of 85% of the United States' national telephone network and certain government contracts, which precluded the Bell System from extending its reach into the fledgling computer industry and from continuing to hold interests in Canada and the Caribbean. The Bell System's Canadian operations included the Bell Canada regional operating company and the Northern Electric manufacturing subsidiary of the Bell System's Western Electric equipment manufacturer. Northern Electric and Bell Canada were spun off in 1956 as separate companies outside of the Bell System proper. The Bell System's Caribbean regional operating companies were sold to the then ITT.

Before the 1956 break-up that restricted the boundaries of the Bell System, the Bell System also included the Northern Electric subsidiary of Western Electric, the Bell Canada regional operating company, and various Caribbean regional operating companies, as well as 54% ownership of NEC and a post-WWII-reconstruction relationship with NTT. Before 1956, the Bell System's reach was truly gargantuan, as the list below of now-divested formerly-held corporations indicates. Even during the period from 1956 to 1984, the Bell System's dominant reach into all forms of communications was pervasive within the United States and influential in telecommunication standardization throughout the industrialized world.

The 1984 Bell System divestiture that brought an end to the affiliation branded as the Bell System was the result of a lawsuit alleging illegal practices by the Bell System companies to stifle competition in the telecommunications industry; the lawsuit was brought against it by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). That lawsuit was filed in 1974, and was settled on January 8, 1982, displacing the former restrictions that AT&T and the DOJ had agreed to in 1956 based on a previous anti-trust lawsuit filed by the DOJ in 1949 that alleged that AT&T and its Bell System operating companies were using its near monopoly in telecommunications to attempt to establish allegedly unfair advantage in related technologies, especially the fledgling computer industry.

Before the 1984 break-up that ended the Bell System, the Bell System included not only AT&T corporate and its long-lines long-distance routing but also many local exchange carriers (LECs). In 1984, the Bell System also included the Western Electric equipment manufacturing unit, the Bell Labs corporate research unit, and the BELLCORE regional operating companies' research unit.

On March 5, 2006, the "new" AT&T (the former SBC) announced plans to merge with BellSouth, which would provide services to 70 million subscribers in 22 states, and gain 100% ownership of Cingular Wireless. This has led some market analysts to believe that the old Bell System may reassemble.*

Present-day usage of the Bell name

The Bell System trademark (as diagram) and service mark (as the words Bell System in text) was used before January 1, 1984, when the AT&T divestiture of its regional operating companies took effect.

Of the various resulting 1984 spinoffs, only Bell South continues to actively use and promote the Bell name and logo, though its pending merger with the new AT&T may bring that to an end. Similarly, cessation of using either the Bell name or logo occurred for many of the other companies more than a decade after the 1984 break up as part of an acquisition-related rebranding. The others have only used the marks on rare occasions to maintain their trademark rights, even less now that they have adopted names conceived long after divestiture. Examples include Verizon, which still uses the Bell logo on its trucks and payphones, and Qwest, formerly U S West, which licenses the Northwestern Bell name to Unical Enterprises, who makes telephones under the Northwestern Bell name.

Cincinnati Bell, a local franchise of the Bell System that was never wholly-owned by AT&T and existed separately prior to 1984, also continues to use the Bell name and logo.

In 1984, each regional Bell operating company was assigned a set list of names they were allowed to use in combination with the Bell marks. Again, aside from BellSouth and Cincinnati Bell, none of these Bell System names are currently in use in the United States. For example, Southwestern Bell used both the Bell name and the circled-bell trademark until SBC opted for all of its companies to do business under the "SBC" name in 2002. Bell Atlantic used the Bell name and circled-bell trademark until renaming itself Verizon in 2000.

Of the various resulting 1956 spinoffs, only Bell Canada continues to use the Bell name, although cessation of using either the Bell name and circled-bell trademark occurred for some of these companies multiple decades later. For example, for the multiple decades that Nortel was named Northern Telecom, their research and development arm was Bell Northern Research. Bell Canada and its holding-company parent, Bell Canada Enterprises, still use the Bell name and used variations the circled-bell logo until 1977, which until 1976 strongly resembled the 1921 to 1939 Bell System trademark shown above.

Subsidiaries

Before the 1984 break-up, the Bell System consisted of the companies listed below. These companies were made separate from AT&T in 1984, except as noted. Due to the 1984 break-up, the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) that were formed out of many formerly separate regional operating companies were: BellSouth, US West, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesis, Ameritech, NYNEX, and Bell Atlantic. The formal term RBOC referring specifically to these seven corporations appeared as part of the 1984 break-up of the Bell System; the term regional operating company was in use in the Bell System before the 1984 break-up as referring to the smaller LECs that were wholly or partially owned by AT&T. In addition to the regional operating companies that were merged to form the seven RBOCs, Cincinnati Bell and SNET were also regional operating companies considered part of the Bell System before 1984. Also, in 1983, the National Exchange Carrier Association, Inc. (NECA) was formed by the FCC and various Bell System companies to perform telephone industry tariff filings and revenue distributions following the 1984 breakup. The NECA was staffed with former employees of Bell-System-affiliated companies. The former operating companies of the Bell System listed below are organized according to the current owners of the companies (or their successors).

SBC Communications, Inc.]], AT&T Inc.'s former corporate name

Beginning in 1991, the Baby Bells began to consolidate operations or legally rename their Bell Operating Companies according to the parent company name, such as "Bell Atlantic - Delaware, Inc." or "U S West Communications, Inc.", to "unify" the corporate image. To this day, the only remaining Baby Bell that has not renamed its operating companies are AT&T, formerly SBC Communications. Since 1995, there have only been 19 Bell Operating Companies, following the mergers of U S West's and BellSouth's operating companies. Only 9 of those 19 have retained their original corporate name since their incorporation before 1984.

Before the 1956 break-up, the Bell System also included the companies listed below. Bell Canada, Northern Electric, and the Caribbean regional operating companies were considered part of the Bell System proper before the 1956 break-up. Nippon Electric was considered a more distant affiliate of Western Electric than Northern Electric, where Nippon Electric via its own research and development adapted the designs of Western Electric's North American telecommunications equipment for use in Japan, which to this day gives much of Japan's telephone equipment and network a closer resemblance to North American ANSI and Telcordia standards than to European-originated ITU-T standards. Before the 1956 break-up, Northern Electric was predominantly focused only on manufacturing without any significant amount of separate telecommunication-equipment research & development of its own. The post-WWII-occupation operation of NTT was considered an administrative adjunct to the North American Bell System.

  • Bell Canada Enterprises, Inc., a currently-existing regional operating company
  • Nortel Networks Corporation, formerly Northern Telecom, a currently-existing equipment-manufacturing company
    • Northern Electric, a former telecommunications equipment-manufacturing subsidiary of Western Electric
    • Dominion Electric, a former recording equipment-manufacturing company
  • various former Caribbean regional operating companies, sold to ITT
  • NEC, a currently-existing equipment-manufacturing company in Japan
    • Nippon Electric, a former telecommunications equipment-manufacturing company 54% owned by Western Electric
  • NTT, a currently-existing telecommunications company in Japan that was administered by AT&T as part of General Douglas MacArthur's post-WWII reconstruction

Operating Company logos

The following is a growing collection of Bell Operating Company logos in their 1969-present forms. It also shows the various positioning schemes (Bell symbol to the left, top left, top centered, etc.), and colors used by the various companies after divestiture. Before divestiture, usually the Bell symbol was blue and the logotype black, like the AT&T logo to this day, or completely black for single color applications. Also, Bell Atlantic, U S West, and NYNEX changed to a different font, as can be seen below in the C&P Telephone, New England Telephone, Mountain Bell, Northwestern Bell and Pacific Northwest Bell logos. Image:nyt_blue.gif|New York Telephone Image:netelephone.gif|New England Telephone Image:njb.gif|New Jersey Bell Image:dstelephone.gif|Diamond State Telephone Image:cptelephone.gif|C&P Telephone Image:bellofpa.gif|The Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania Image:illinoisbell.gif|Illinois Bell Image:ohiobell.gif|Ohio Bell Image:michiganbell.gif|Michigan Bell Image:Indbell logo.GIF|Indiana Bell Image:MBT.jpg|Mountain Bell Image:nwb.gif|Northwestern Bell Image:pnb.gif|Pacific Northwest Bell Image:SCBT.jpg|South Central Bell Image:southernbell.gif|Southern Bell Image:swbell_logo.gif|Southwestern Bell Image:pactelephone.gif|Pacific Telephone (pre divestiture) Image:pacific_bell_logo.png|Pacific Bell (post divestiture) Image:nevadabell_logo.gif|Nevada Bell (post divestiture)

See also

External links / References

1921 establishments | 1984 disestablishments | Bell System | Telecommunications companies | Telecommunications history | AT&T

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Bell System".

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