Prior to the
AT&T breakup in
1984 , AT&T held 89.8% of Pacific Telephone. After the breakup, changed its name to '''Pacific Bell Telephone Company''' and was often referred to as '''PacBell'''.
In 1997,
Pacific Telesis Group was acquired by
SBC Communications , and although the
Pacific Telesis corporate name disappeared fairly quickly, SBC continued to operate the local telephone companies separately under their original names.
In September 2001, SBC rebranded the telephone company "SBC Pacific Bell". In late 2002, the companies were rebranded again as simply "SBC". Meanwhile, employees of SBC working in California who support SBC's non-regulated services and/or services provided both within and outside California were transferred to other SBC subsidiaries, like "Pacific Telesis Shared Services" and "SBC Operations, Inc." However, for legal and regulatory purposes, employees supporting local regulated services were still employed by "Pacific Bell Telephone Company dba SBC California ("SBC California")" which is the SBC subsidiary that provides regulated
Local Exchange Carrier telephone services within the franchise territory in California.
On
November 18 ,
2005 , SBC completed its acquisition of AT&T Corp. to form
AT&T Inc. Pacific Bell is now known as .
