Editing Regional Bell Operating Company (section)

==Baby Bells==
A "Baby Bell" is a local telephone company in the United States that was in existence at the time of the breakup of AT&T into the resulting Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs). Sometimes also referred to as an "ILEC" (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier) they were the former Bell System or Independent Telephone Company responsible for providing local telephone exchange services in a specified geographic area.

After the [[Modification of Final Judgment]], the resulting Baby Bells were originally named:
* [[Ameritech]]
* [[Bell Atlantic]] 
* [[BellSouth]] 
* [[NYNEX]] 
* [[Pacific Telesis]] 
* [[AT&T|Southwestern Bell]]
* [[US West]] 

Prior to 1984, AT&T Corp. also held investments in two smaller and otherwise independent companies, [[Cincinnati Bell]] and [[Southern New England Telephone]] (SNET). Following the 1984 breakup, these became fully independent as well. All nine local-exchange holding companies were assigned a share of the rights to the Bell trademark.

=== Shared trademarks ===
[[File:Bell System hires 1969 logo blue.svg|thumb|100px|The Bell System [[logo]] and [[trademark]] as it appeared in 1969]]
After divestiture, AT&T Corp. was prohibited from using the Bell name or logo (with the notable exception of AT&T's [[Bell Laboratories]]) and those trademarks which would be shared by the RBOCs and the two companies AT&T partially owned. Cincinnati Bell was the last RBOC to hold the "Bell" name, but it rebranded as Altafiber in March of 2022.

Additionally, [[Bell Canada]], the former Bell Telephone Company of Canada (founded in 1880) and which started separating from the [[Bell System]] in 1956, and completely by 1975, continues to use the "Bell" trademarks, which it owns outright in Canada.

[[Verizon]] continued to use the Bell logo on its payphones (including former [[GTE]] payphones), hard hats, trucks, and buildings, most likely intending to display continued use in order to maintain the company's trademark rights. Following the company updating its logo in 2015 and subsequent reimaging of its trucks, the Bell logo has since been removed.

[[Malheur Bell]], an autonomous local phone company owned by [[Qwest Corporation|Qwest]], used the Bell name and logo until its merger into Qwest in 2009.

Apart from historical documents, AT&T does not presently make active use of the Bell marks. Its local exchange companies have retained the "Bell" names; however, they have been doing business under other names since 2002. Many of these names are still listed with the US Patent and Trademark Office as current trademarks, since these names are still considered in use.