Frontier Communications of Connecticut
The Southern New England Telephone Company (commonly referred to as SNET or SNETCo [phonetically, /snɛt/ or /snɛtkəʊ/] by its customers), doing business as Frontier Communications of Connecticut, is a local exchange carrier owned by Frontier Communications.
 | |
| Frontier Communications of Connecticut | |
| Private (Subsidiary of Frontier) | |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Founded | 1878 |
| Headquarters | New Haven, Connecticut |
Key people | Dan McCarthy Chairman and CEO Ken Arndt East Region President Paul Quick Senior VP & General Manager Connecticut Edward O'Connor Jr Sales VP,Connecticut Joseph Ferraiolo Area General Manager New Haven County Zachary Tomblin Area General Manager Eastern Connecticut |
| Products | Local Telephone Service, Broadband |
Number of employees | 2700 |
| Parent | SNET (1986–1998) AT&T Inc. (1998–2014) Frontier (2014-Present) |
| Website | http://www.frontier.com/ct |
It is the only provider in Connecticut to provide landline residential and commercial telephone services that do not rely on internet protocol, except for Verizon New York which provides Plain-Old Telephone Service for Greenwich and Byram. As such, it is the only home phone provider in Connecticut that remains operational when home internet is unavailable. Because fixed phone services run on an alternate electrical system, by using a low-power wired phone or a base with a battery backup, its subscribers can enjoy phone service even while both home internet and power are knocked out due to maintenance, suspension or natural disaster.
History
It started operations on January 28, 1878 as the District Telephone Company of New Haven.[1] It was the founder of the first telephone exchange, as well as the world's first telephone book. Since its inception, SNET has held a monopoly on most of the telephone services in the state of Connecticut; the only remaining exceptions are the Greenwich and Byram exchanges where Verizon New York provides telephone service.[2]
SNET and Cincinnati Bell were the only two companies in the old Bell System that the old AT&T only had a minority stake in; by 1983, AT&T's stake was only 19.6 percent. Therefore, neither was considered a Bell Operating Company; rather, they were considered independents.
Sale to SBC
SNET was purchased for $4.4 billion in 1998 by SBC Communications, which subsequently purchased the old AT&T, taking its name as the "new" AT&T. Under AT&T, SNET was known as AT&T Connecticut.
In 2006, AT&T merged the operations of SNET into AT&T Teleholdings, formerly Ameritech, making it a subsidiary of the latter.
On June 1, 2007, the operations of Woodbury Telephone were merged into SNET.
Sale to Frontier
On October 24, 2014, Frontier Communications completed its purchase of AT&T's Connecticut operations, including Southern New England Telephone and SNET America, for $2 billion.[3] The company began doing business as Frontier Communications of Connecticut. It is the second former unit of the Bell System to be acquired by Frontier, the first being Frontier West Virginia (originally C&P Telephone of West Virginia) which was purchased from Verizon in 2010.
External links
- History - University of Connecticut Libraries
- "AT&T Press Release Headlines & News from AT&T". att.com. Retrieved 2017-08-09.
References
- First Commercial Telephone Exchange – Today in History: January 28, Connecticut's Office of the State Historian
- AT&T SNET Fairfield County White Pages, Customer Service Guide page 14, "Local Toll-free Calling Areas", August 2006 edition
- Pilon, Matt (June 6, 2018). "Frontier's CT losses spike". HartfordBusiness.com. Retrieved January 23, 2019.