Associated Telephone Investment was dissolved but not before its parent's financial plight had become irreversible, and in 1933 Associated Telephone Utilities went into receivership.
Within two years the investment company had incurred major losses, and a $1 million loan had to be negotiated. Designed to support its parent's acquisition program, the new company's primary business was buying company stock in order to bolster its market value. In January 1930 a new subsidiary, Associated Telephone Investment Company, was established. By the time the stock market bottomed out in October 1929, Associated Telephone Utilities was operating about 500,000 telephones with revenues approaching $17 million. An aggressive acquisition program was quickly launched in eastern, midwestern, and western states, with the company using its own common stock to complete transactions.ĭuring its first six years, Associated Telephone Utilities acquired 340 telephone companies, which were consolidated into 45 companies operating more than 437,000 telephones in 25 states. Sampsell was elected president of the new company, and Odegard and LaCroix were named vice-presidents. That company was formed in 1926 to acquire Associated Telephone Company and assume the assets of Commonwealth Telephone. LaCroix, a partner in Paine, Webber & Company in Boston, proceeded to devise a plan for a holding company, to be named Associated Telephone Utilities Company. Sampsell, president of Wisconsin Power and Light Company, and Morris F. Odegard, with the assistance of Marshall E. Expansion was stepped up in 1926, when Odegard secured an option to purchase Associated Telephone Company of Long Beach, California. It also diversified into other utilities by acquiring two small Wisconsin electrical companies. Brown, a former Bell System employee.īy the mid-1920s Commonwealth had extended beyond Wisconsin borders and purchased the Belvidere Telephone Company in Illinois. In 1922 Pratt resigned as vice-president and was replaced by Clarence R. Richland Center Telephone became part of Commonwealth Telephone, which quickly purchased telephone companies in three nearby communities. In 1920 that principle was put into action, and the three accountants formed a corporation, Commonwealth Telephone Company, with Odegard as president, Pratt as vice-president, and O'Connell as secretary. Pratt worked under the guiding principle that better telephone service could be rendered to small communities if a number of exchanges were operated under one managing body. GTE's heritage can be traced to 1918, when three Wisconsin public utility accountants pooled $33,500 to purchase the Richland Center Telephone Company, serving 1,466 telephones in the dairy belt of southern Wisconsin.
While the two companies were united under one name, each has a rich history of its own. Designed to take advantage of the two companies' complementary businesses, the merger strengthened GTE's assets in two of its three major areas of operations: telephone service and telecommunications products. With a market value of $28 billion, the merged company became a telecommunications powerhouse. competitors, GTE Corporation and Contel Corporation, under the GTE name. In March 1990 the largest merger in the history of the telecommunications industry united two former U.S. GTE's strategy for the mid- to late 1990s focused on technological enhancement of wireline and wireless systems, expansion of data services, global expansion, and diversification into video services. The $6.6 billion acquisition of Contel Corporation in 1990 nearly doubled GTE's Mobilnet cellular operations, making it the second-largest provider of cellular telephone services in the United States, with over two million customers. With over 20 million telephone access lines in 40 states, the communications conglomerate was America's leading provider of local telephone services. GTE Corporation ranked as the world's third-largest publicly owned telecommunications company in 1996.
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