GTE Corporation, formerly General Telephone & Electronics Corporation was the largest independent telephone company in the United States during the days of the Bell System. Originally founded in 1929 as Associated Telephone Utilities, it went bankrupt in 1933 during the Great Depression, and reorganized as General Telephone in 1934. In 1991 it acquired the third largest independent, Continental Telephone . They also owned Automatic Electric, a telephone equipment supplier similar in many ways to Western Electric, and Sylvania Lighting, the only non-communications-oriented company under... GTE ownership. GTE provided local telephone service to a large number of areas of the U.S. through operating companies, much like how American Telephone & Telegraph provided local telephone service through its 22 Bell Operating Companies. The company also acquired BBN Planet, one of the earliest Internet service providers, in 1997. That division became known as GTE Internetworking, and was later spun off into the independent company Genuity as part of the GTE-Bell Atlantic merger that created Verizon.
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