Damaged landline utility box

GTE Corp. merged with Bell Atlantic Corp. to become Verizon Communications Inc. on June 30, 2000.

If your located in California, Florida or Texas… Verizon sold off these GTE areas to Frontier in 2015.

https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/frontier-acquires-verizon-wireline-assets-3-states-for-10-5b#:~:text=Under%20the%20terms%20of%20the,time%20of%20closing%20the%20deal.

Therefore Frontier should be your contact not ATT Inc. which is SouthWestern Bell who purchased Pacific Telsis, Ameritech, Bell South and ATT Corporation then renamed to ATT Inc. 

I am located in Illinois. I contacted frontier today and they said it would not be theirs. They were my first thought. They suggested it could be Verizon. I attempted to contact Verizon too. I could not get past the automated system to real person without an account number. I’ll try them again tomorrow. My google searches have suggested that AT&T might be my only choice in the area for a landline phone line using the old copper wire. I also contacted the village that I live in today. Oddly, they could not tell me who the box belonged to either  

Zip code?

62549

The only telco provider for that zip code is Frontier covering about 90% of addresses.

EarthLink is a reseller of other services, in this case Frontier service thus the percentage of coverage is the same. 

https://broadbandnow.com/Illinois/Mt-Zion?zip=62549

not sure where Mt Zion is located but found this article that more rural areas of Illinois was Verizon that was sold to Frontier around 2009/2010.

https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/2009/05/13/verizon-selling-landline-operations-in/43172533007/

They (Verizon) are in transition to become a cable and wireless company. They’re positioning themselves to get out of the local phone business,” said Doug Dougherty, president of the Illinois Telecommunications Association.

Dougherty said Frontier is not new to Illinois — the company has 130 employees in Illinois and a regional headquarters in Carlinville — and the sale actually could speed video and other high-tech services to smaller communities, while as the major companies, such as Verizon and AT&T, concentrate on metropolitan markets.

Labor unions representing more than 8,000 Verizon workers, including in Illinois, were more cautious.

Verizon and forerunner GTE traditionally covered much of rural Illinois, while AT&T and forerunners Illinois Bell and Ameritech dominated larger markets, including Chicago and Springfield.

EDIT… the box is not ATT, but originally GTE to Verizon (2000) to Frontier (2010).

Thanks for your research on this, I have suspected it was Frontier for some time but they continue to say that the box does not belong to them. Interestingly Frontier recently installed fiber to my house. I wonder if they just don’t want to  take responsibility of removing the old technology now that everything is switched over to either fiber or cable in the neighborhood.