Verizon Communications Inc. is an American telecommunications company headquartered in New York City. It is the world's second-largest telecommunications company by revenue and its mobile network is the largest wireless carrier in the United States, with 146.8 million subscribers as of March 31, 2026. The company was founded as Bell Atlantic Corporation and renamed to Verizon on June 30, 2000 as a result of a merger with GTE. Bell Atlantic was originally headquartered in Philadelphia and operated in the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. In 1997, the company expanded into New York and the New England states by merging with fellow Baby Bell NYNEX. While Bell Atlantic was the surviving company, it moved its head office to NYNEX's old headquarters in New York City. In 2000, Bell Atlantic merged with GTE, which operated telecommunications companies across most of the rest of the country not already in Bell Atlantic's footprint. In 2015, Verizon expanded into content ownership by acquiring AOL, and two years later, it acquired Yahoo! Inc.