Verizon Communications Inc.

Verizon Communications Inc. ( və-RY-zən) is an American telecommunications company headquartered in New York City. It is the world's second-largest telecommunications company by revenue and its mobile network is the largest wireless carrier in the United States, with 146.8 million subscribers as of March 31, 2026. The company was founded as Bell Atlantic Corporation and renamed to Verizon on June 30, 2000 as a result of a merger with GTE.

Bell Atlantic was originally headquartered in Philadelphia and operated in the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. In 1997, the company expanded into New York and the New England states by merging with fellow Baby Bell NYNEX. While Bell Atlantic was the surviving company, it moved its head office to NYNEX's old headquarters in New York City. In 2000, Bell Atlantic merged with GTE, which operated telecommunications companies across most of the rest of the country not already in Bell Atlantic's footprint.

In 2015, Verizon expanded into content ownership by acquiring AOL, and two years later, it acquired Yahoo! Inc. AOL and Yahoo were amalgamated into a new division named Oath Inc., which was rebranded as Verizon Media in January 2019, and was spun off and rebranded to Yahoo! Inc. after its sale to Apollo Global Management.

As of 2026, Verizon is one of three remaining companies with 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 the Bells' former parent AT&T Corporation and began using the AT&T name, while CenturyLink acquired Qwest (formerly US West) in 2011, renaming to Lumen Technologies in 2020; only for AT&T to reacquire the broadband business of Lumen in February 2026.