[InclinedPlane]

That picture is not very accurate. It makes it seem as though USWest simply changed their name to QWest, in reality they got bought by QWest which was a young (founded in 1996) company which had been focusing on fiber optic runs up until they bought a for-reals telecom. I'm sure there are other inaccuracies, that one seemed particularly glaring.

[jpgs]

It's riddled with mistakes. SNET was never part of AT&T. GTE and Contel merged, keeping the GTE name, so GTE should be next to Contel. BOCs should be before the 7 RBOCs as part of AT&T. Many missing like NY Tel and NE Tel which became the NYNEX RBOC. MCI line should start with MCI. There are others, and arguably the Sprint/United connection needs to be with GTE. Nice idea, but I hope nobody uses this for serious information.

[true_religion]

It simplifies a lot:

It seems to imply that Bell Atlantic et all merged to become Verizon around 2000.

Bell Atlantic merged with NYNEX in 1997.

In 1999 Vodafone merged with Airtouch to become Vodafone Airtouch in the US.

Vodafone-Airtouch in that same year went after PrimeCo and merged with it.

Verizon Communications is actually the result of the Bell Atlantic and GTE merger of 2000 (signed 1998).

GTE was not a Bell. Neither was Contel which was acquired by GTE in 1991 (so they should both be on the same level).

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture signed in 1999 and begun real operations 2000 between then Bell Mobile. and Vodafone-Airtouch-Primeco.

Finally in 2005, Verizon Wireless bought MCI.

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Looking back on things, the chart really only shows named succession. It doesn't attempt at all to do what you're expect---place companies on a family tree.