Cincinnati Bell: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Cincinnati Bell is the traditional phone company for Cincinnati, Ohio and its nearby suburbs in Indiana and Kentucky. The parent company is named Cincinnati Bell Inc. The ILEC (original phone company) subsidiary uses the name Cincinnati Bell Telephone, and there are other subsidiaries to handle services such as payphones, long distance (IXC operations), and mobile phone (cellular) services.

Cincinnati Bell started out as the City and Suburban Telegraph Company and was providing telegraph lines between homes and businesses in 1873, three years before the invention of the telephone. In 1878, it gained exclusive rights to the Bell franchise within a 25 mile radius of Cincinnati; it has substantially the same ILEC territory today: small yet straddling a 3-state area.

Cincinnati Bell and Southern New England Telephone were the only two companies in the old Bell System that were owned independently of AT&T; therefore, neither is considered a Regional Bell operating company (RBOC). SNET was bought by SBC, an RBOC, in 1998, but Cincinnati Bell has remained independent: its stock is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange with the stock symbol CBB.