Verizon New Jersey, Inc., formerly New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, is the Bell Operating Company serving the U.S. state

U.S. state

A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...

 of New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

. In 1984, the Bell System Divestiture

Bell System divestiture

The Bell System divestiture, or the breakup of AT&T, was initiated by the filing in 1974 by the U.S. Department of Justice of an antitrust lawsuit against AT&T. The case, United States v...

 split New Jersey Bell off into a Regional Bell Operating Company

Regional Bell Operating Company

The Regional Bell Operating Companies are the result of United States v. AT&T, the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust suit against the former American Telephone & Telegraph Company . On January 8, 1982, AT&T Corp. settled the suit and agreed to divest its local exchange service operating...

, along with the 21 other BOCs AT&T

AT&T

AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

 had a majority stake in. On January 1, 1984, New Jersey Bell became part of Bell Atlantic.
New Jersey Bell was founded in 1904 as an AT&T company serving southern New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

, named Delaware and Atlantic Telegraph & Telephone Company. New York Telephone

New York Telephone

The New York Telephone Company was organized in 1896, taking over the New York City operations of the American Bell Telephone Company.-Predecessor companies:...

 served northern New Jersey. In October 1927, D&A T&T changed its name to New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, and purchased the New Jersey properties of New York Telephone

New York Telephone

The New York Telephone Company was organized in 1896, taking over the New York City operations of the American Bell Telephone Company.-Predecessor companies:...

 which had belonged to New York and New Jersey Telephone and Telegraph.

Throughout the 1980s to the first half of the 90s, New Jersey Bell kept its traditional identity. In 1994, Bell Atlantic started rebranding all its companies to Bell Atlantic-(state), so New Jersey Bell became Bell Atlantic - New Jersey, Inc. In 2000, after the Bell Atlantic - GTE

GTE

GTE Corporation, formerly General Telephone & Electronics Corporation was the largest independent telephone company in the United States during the days of the Bell System....

 merger, the corporation changed its name to Verizon, and so New Jersey Bell once again changed its name, this time to Verizon New Jersey, Inc. Verizon New Jersey's headquarters is the New Jersey Bell Headquarters Building

New Jersey Bell Headquarters Building

New Jersey Bell Headquarters Building, is located in Newark, New Jersey. The building was built in 1929 by the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 21, 2005. The art deco building was designed by Ralph Thomas Walker of the...

, 540 Broad Street, Newark, NJ.

Innovations and firsts

After Bell Labs

Bell Labs

Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

 moved from New York to New Jersey, they often installed new technological developments there, before deploying farther afield.

• 1951 New Jersey Bell was the first Bell Operating Company to deploy Direct Distance Dialing
  Direct distance dialing
  Direct distance dialing or direct dial is a telecommunications term for a network-provided service feature in which a call originator may, without operator assistance, call any other user outside the local calling area. DDD requires more digits in the number dialed than are required for calling...
  
   for long distance telephone calls in Englewood, NJ. Previously, all long distance calls had to be handled through an operator.
• 1965 The first installation of the first Bell System
  Bell System
  The Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and then, subsequently, AT&T led system which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the company was broken up into separate companies, by a U.S...
  
   electronic switching system
  Electronic switching system
  In telecommunications, an electronic switching system is:* A telephone exchange based on the principles of time-division multiplexing of digitized analog signals. An electronic switching system digitizes analog signals from subscriber loops, and interconnects them by assigning the digitized...
  
  , the Western Electric
  Western Electric
  Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management...
  
   1ESS, was installed at New Jersey Bell's Succasuna central office. Prior to the 1ESS switch
  1ESS switch
  The Number One Electronic Switching System, the first large-scale Stored Program Control telephone exchange or Electronic Switching System in the Bell System, was introduced in Succasunna, New Jersey, in May 1965. The switching fabric was composed of reed matrixes controlled by wire spring relays...
  
  , switching was achieved under electromechanical control.
• 1987 New Jersey Bell was the first to introduce Caller ID
  Caller ID
  Caller ID , also called calling line identification or calling number identification or Calling Line Identification Presentation , is a telephone service, available in analog and digital phone systems and most Voice over Internet Protocol applications, that transmits a caller's number to...
  
   service. The first Caller ID box was sold at a Sears
  Sears, Roebuck and Company
  Sears, officially named Sears, Roebuck and Co., is an American chain of department stores which was founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in the late 19th century...
  
   store in Jersey City, NJ, was manufactured by Colonial Data Technologies, and branded AT&T.
• 2006 Verizon New Jersey was the first company to file application for a video franchise under New Jersey's new centralized video franchise law. Previously, cable television
  Cable television
  Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
  
  providers had to file with every municipality in which they wished to provide service individually, thus making Verizon New Jersey the state's first statewide competitive "cable company".