GTE Corporation

▪ American company

formerly (1959–82)  General Telephone and Electronics Corporation 

      U.S. holding company for several U.S. and international telephone companies. It also manufactures electronic consumer and industrial equipment. It is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut.

      General Telephone was founded in 1926 as Associated Telephone Utilities by Sigurd Odegard, a Wisconsin phone-company owner who wanted to acquire small independent phone companies. The company went bankrupt during the Great Depression and, in 1934, was reorganized as General Telephone. Growth was modest until the accession of Donald C. Power as president in 1950. He immediately bought the Automatic Electric Company, a telephone-equipment manufacturer, and in 1958 merged with Sylvania Electronics. The two acquisitions gave GTE the capability to manufacture the electronic switching systems needed by a phone company.

      Phone service is provided primarily to rural areas not served by American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (AT&T Corporation); the major exceptions are in California suburbs and the Tampa, Florida, metropolitan area. The company also manufactures sophisticated electronics equipment for the U.S. military. It entered the data-processing field in 1979 with the purchase of Telenet, operator of a nationwide computer data switching network. GTE and Bell Atlantic Corporation merged to become Verizon Communications in 2000.

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