Drive 10-20 miles, and you'll be in areas where AT&T decided to sell the lines
  to a bankrupt telco. Looking at the lines in those areas is entertaining. The
  telephone poles were installed by some ancient secret society named "GTE", and
  now have 20 degree bows. When lines loosen up and block traffic, the usually just
  tie them up on to some nearby tree branch.

The way I remember it GTE did not go bankrupt and instead became part of Verizon. Most of the Bay Area was PacBell (landline) territory, but there were a few pockets here and there where GTE had a monopoly. For wireless it was a different story with AT&T / CellularOne getting Side A and GTE / Verizon getting Side B with PacBell being relegated to the PCS band.

In fact I just took a quick peek at their Wikipedia page. GTE went bankrupt in 1933 and recovered. They were not part of the Bell system until 2000 when they were acquired by Bell Atlantic as part of the creation of Verizon.

Monopolies suck but GTE (and Verizon) were almost always better about building out higher speed DSL and fiber than PacBell/SBC/AT&T ever were.

> where AT&T decided to sell the lines to a bankrupt telco

Is that frontier? I'm pretty sure those lines were never at&t. A local phone company, then gte, then verizon, then frontier. IIRC.

Verizon is a descendent of babybells, but that doesn't make everything they touch at&t.