The first incarnation of the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company was a short-lived company set up to develop the then-new telephone. It should not be confused with the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company that was formed a year later and became one of the largest of the regional Bell Telephone Companies.
New England Telephone and Telegraph lasted only a year as a separate entity, from 1878 to 1879, and had no direct relationship with the later company of the same name, which after the breakup of the Bell System in 1984 became part of the NYNEX Corporation, now part of Verizon.