Verizon Communications Inc. (listen ) ( və-RY-zən) is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is based at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, but is incorporated in Delaware.
In 1984, the Justice Department of the United States mandated AT&T Corporation to break up the Bell System and split into seven companies, called "Baby Bells". One of the baby bells, Bell Atlantic, came into existence in 1984 consisting of the separate operating companies New Jersey Bell, Bell of Pennsylvania, Diamond State Telephone, and C&P Telephone, with a footprint from New Jersey to Virginia. This company would later become Verizon.
As part of a rebranding of the Baby Bells in the mid-1990s, all of Bell Atlantic's operating companies assumed the holding company's name. In 1997, Bell Atlantic expanded into New York and the New England states by merging with fellow Baby Bell NYNEX. Although Bell Atlantic was the surviving company name, the merged company moved its headquarters from Philadelphia to NYNEX's old headquarters in New York City. In 2000, Bell Atlantic acquired GTE, which operated telecommunications companies across most of the rest of the country that was not already in Bell Atlantic's footprint. Bell Atlantic, the surviving entity, changed its name to "Verizon", a portmanteau of veritas (Latin for "truth") and horizon.In 2015, Verizon expanded its business into content ownership by acquiring AOL, and two years later it acquired Yahoo!. AOL and Yahoo were amalgamated into a new division named Oath Inc. (currently known as Verizon Media Group).
As of 2016, Verizon is one of three remaining companies that had their roots in the former Baby Bells. The other two, like Verizon, exist as a result of mergers among fellow former Baby Bell members. SBC Communications, bought out the Bells' former parent AT&T Corporation, and assumed the AT&T name. CenturyLink was formed initially in 2011 by the acquisition of Qwest (formerly named US West).
Verizon's subsidiary Verizon Wireless is the largest U.S. wireless communications service provider as of September 2014, with 147 million mobile customers. And as of 2017, Verizon is the only publicly-traded telecommunications company to have two stock listings in its home country, both the NYSE (principal) and NASDAQ (secondary). As of 2017, it is also the second largest telecommunications company by revenue after AT&T.