Baby Bell
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of Baby Bell
An Americanism dating back to 1985–90
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He said that the argument for allowing cable company mergers was the same that allowed for the consolidation of the Baby Bell companies after the breakup of AT&T. “It’s a geographic extension,” he said.
From New York Times • Feb. 15, 2014
April 1997: SBC closes acquisition of a fellow Baby Bell, Pacific Telesis Group, for more than $16 billion.
From BusinessWeek • Mar. 21, 2011
It's ironic that at a telephone company someone can talk about being entrepreneurial, but we were starting our own Baby Bell.
From Washington Post • Dec. 5, 2010
Not even the court-ordered breakup of AT&T 11 years ago into seven Baby Bell phone companies and one everything-else corporation comes close.
From Time Magazine Archive
Now Bellcore was a quasi-independent, jointly owned company that acted as the research arm for all seven of the Baby Bell RBOCs.
From The Hacker Crackdown, law and disorder on the electronic frontier by Sterling, Bruce
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
