NYNEX Corporation was a telephone company that served five New England states (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont) as well as most of New York state, except the Rochester area, from 1984 through 1997.Formed January 1, 1984, as a result of the Bell System Divestiture, NYNEX was a Regional Bell operating company made up of former AT&T subsidiaries New York Telephone Company and New England Telephone. Hence, the name NYNEX stood for New York/New England, with the Xrepresenting the unknown future (or "the uneXpected"), but the X is also widely believed to mean eXchange. Bell Atlantic bought NYNEX on August 14, 1997, in what was, at the time, the second largest merger in American corporate history. The corporate headquarters was moved from Philadelphia to New York City. On June 30, 2000, Bell Atlantic acquired GTE to form Verizon Communications.NYNEX is now known as Verizon's "Northeast Bureau".NYNEX also operated cable television and telephone services in the United Kingdom, with offices in Waterlooville (Hampshire), Baguley (Manchester), Shoreham-by-Sea (West Sussex),Leatherhead (Surrey) and Antrim (Northern Ireland). In 1997, the UK assets of NYNEX were merged with the Cable & Wireless subsidiary Mercury Communications and cable operators Vidéotron and Bell Cablemedia, and renamed as Cable & Wireless Communications. Cable & Wireless's cable assets were sold to NTL in 2000. In 2006, NTL merged with telewest and later re-branded on 8 February 2007 as Virgin Media.