General Telephone and Electronics Corporation - GTE - Specimen Stock Certificate

Specimen Stock printed by American Bank Note Company. 

GTE Corporation, previously known as General Telephone & Electronics Corporation (1955–1982), was the largest independent telephone provider in the United States during the era of the Bell System. The company was established in 1926, with origins that extend even further back, and continued operations until 2000, when it was purchased by Bell Atlantic, which subsequently rebranded as Verizon.

The Associated Telephone Utilities Company, based in Wisconsin, was established in 1926; it declared bankruptcy in 1933 amid the Great Depression and was restructured as General Telephone in 1934. In 1991, it acquired Continental Telephone (ConTel), the third largest independent telephone company. GTE also owned Automatic Electric, a supplier of telephone equipment that was comparable in many respects to Western Electric, as well as Sylvania Lighting, the only company under GTE's ownership that was not focused on communications. GTE delivered local telephone services to numerous regions across the U.S. through its operating companies, similar to how American Telephone & Telegraph provided local services via its 22 Bell Operating Companies.

In 1997, the company acquired BBN Planet, one of the pioneering Internet service providers. This division was renamed GTE Internetworking and was later spun off into an independent entity called Genuity (a name reused from another Internet company that GTE had acquired in 1997) to comply with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations concerning the merger of GTE and Bell Atlantic that resulted in the formation of Verizon.