Woodbury Telephone

Infobox_Defunct Company
company_name = The Woodbury Telephone Company
company_
fate = Dissolved
successor = Southern New England Telephone
foundation = 1870
defunct = 2007
location = Woodbury, CT, U.S.
industry = Telecommunications
key_people =
products = Local Telephone Service
num_employees =
parent =
subsid =

The Woodbury Telephone Company was a telephone company serving Woodbury, Southbury and Bethlehem, Connecticut. It is now owned by AT&T.

Woodbury Telephone was acquired by Southern New England Telecommunications in 1997, approximately one year later SNET merged with SBC Communications. It continued as a separate operating company of Southern New England Telephone.

Woodbury Telephone began operation in the 1870's when a local businessman, Mr. Charles A. Stone visited the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition 1876 and realized the value of connecting his grain and feed store to the Southbury Railroad Station via the telephone. The company grew modestly and was incorporated in 1910 with Arthur D. Warner as its first President. The company continued in operation and upgraded from a manual switchboard to a direct dial system in 1955. As the service area grew considerably in the 1970's and 1980's the company deployed digital switching, fiber optic network architecture and in the 1990's it successfully introduced internet service with broadband access.

On June 1, 2007 the company was dissolved and merged all assets and operations into Southern New England Telephone.

Trivia

*Woodbury Telephone was the only local telephone operating company SBC/AT&T owned that had no roots in the original AT&T or Alexander Graham Bell.
* there were 5 other independent telephone companies that served parts of Connecticut and were bought by SNET: Lebanon(1912), East Haven(1925), Collinsville(1939), Sharon(1943) and Huntington(1948).