The story
In 1995, GTE Midwest's Minnesota operations were transferred to Contel of Minnesota, Inc. Contel of Minnesota had always been a separate company from GTE Midwest.
In 2000, GTE completed the sale of some of its Missouri lines to Spectra Communications Group, which was an investment of CenturyTel. Also occurring that year Bell Atlantic acquired GTE, renaming the merged company Verizon. Upon the completion of the merger, Iowa operations of GTE Midwest were sold to Iowa Network Service, and Nebraska operations were sold to Citizens Utilities (Citizens Telecommunications Company of Nebraska). By the end of 2000, GTE Midwest only served Missouri, and GTE Midwest began doing business as Verizon Midwest.
From Wikipedia’s article on GTE Midwest, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3