You've got to remember that "at&t" (the current one) is not AT&T, the remains of The Bell System resulting from the 1983 divestiture.
SBC, which started out as a Regional Bell Operating Company named "Southwestern Bell", bought the old AT&T at firesale prices back in 2005 and assumed its corporate livery.
SBC and Southwestern Bell before it, never made a secret of thinking that the 1983 Bell System breakup was a mistake, and has spent the last 28 years trying to put the Bell System monopoly back into place.
Wait...but it is the AT&T from the Bell System. The fact that it was one of the spin-offs buying back the mothership probably has little consequence in terms of attitudes and/or business strategy. I imagine the AT&T ethos of old was pretty well spread between all the "Baby" bells and "Mama" Bell.
Also, you forgot the part where shortly after SBC bought AT&T, the "new" AT&T bought Cingular, a partnership between Bell South and the former AT&T. Oh, and the part where before buying AT&T, SBC also bought Ameritech, the parent company of the Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin "Baby" Bells, and Pacific Telesis, the parent company of Pacbell and Nevada Bell.
...and what of the other "Baby" Bells? Well, Bell Atlantic and NYNEX combined to form a company you may have heard of: Verizon!
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.
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.
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.
Amazing that a monopoly could eventually go bankrupt. People get paid millions a year to run companies like that into the ground. Charlie Sheen could do no worse.
The original AT&T, before SBC takeover, failed to implement number portability by the late 2004 deadline that all other wireless companies hit. They also "botched" a CRM system upgrade.
Charlie Sheen might have gotten it done better, it's hard to say. If he can listen to "the little people" telling him that problems are imminent, then maybe he could have averted AT&T's downfall.
Being a monopoly is the only way AT&T knows how to survive. Do you see them competing ever in a non-regulated field? Even the iPhone deal was a monopoly for 5 years....that's AT&T's DNA.
Do you really think it's a regulation issue? This is essentially the corporatist end game dream scenario. What major corporation would ever willingly sacrifice growth, market share & profit for the sustainability of a fair market & the wellbeing of the consumer?
It's not an AT&T thing... all big guys would want it, especially the market share. I am not liking the news of AT&T buying T-Mobile. There so many things fed up about it. AT&T data usage is not "truly" unlimited. AT&T's customer service sucks big time. When I missed to read the detail of my bill one month, the support rep told me I need to grow up and pay attention to my bill every month. True, I accept it but that also means AT&T cannot be trusted to accurately report on our billing, auto withdrawal, etc. They are bunch of a*holes. They do this to us while we have other carriers and other options. Imagine how they would treat us if they were the only guys.
My proudest accomplishment in law school was a research paper I wrote entitled "Anti-Antitrust: The Need for Antitrust Law Reform."
In that paper, I argued that antitrust law as applied today totally misses the point: the issue shouldn't be whether a company, otherwise satisfying the elements of a monopoly, is harming competitors, but whether a company is actually harming consumers. Put another way: who is complaining about the alleged anticompetitive tactics: competitors, or consumers?
If one studies all the big antitrust cases of the 20th century -- from Alcoa, to DuPont, to Microsoft -- a curious trend emerges: it was always those companies' competitors who took issue with seemingly anticompetitive tactics of the big evil "trusts," and rarely -- if ever -- was it the consumers themselves.
A great example of this is Microsoft in the 1990s: do any of you -- aside from our realm of early adopter computer savvy tech types -- genuinely remember any everyday computer users actually complaining that Windows came preinstalled with IE instead of Netscape? Were consumers actually harmed, were they actually suffering? No: the only "people" who had an issue with MS bundling IE with Windows -- frankly, a brilliant strategy -- were Microsoft's competitors, and not, in fact, MS's customers.
So my take on this ATT & T-mobile merger is simple: the investigation should not focus on whether ATT/T-mobile is a monopoly from competitors' points of view, but whether it is anticompetitive to the point of actually harming consumers, e.g., with higher prices, etc.
Frankly, a good example of a company that really deserves a DOJ investigation is Apple -- IFF customers start to actually complain, and not not just Apple's competitors' start to complain.
Put more simply: a DOJ investigation into whether a company is a monopoly should be based upon whether consumers -- not competitors -- are actually being harmed by the allegedly anticompetitive tactics of a "monopoly."
After all, a company could not become a monopoly without customers' support in the first place. So clearly they have done something right that customers appreciate.
A "monopoly" that is not causing harm to consumers, either directly or indirectly, is not necessarily so terrible a thing. In fact, as with Apple, it is often the case that consumers enjoy a net benefit from such a company.
Well in this case I have a grudge against AT&T, specifically as a consumer. I don't like that they can get away absurd customer relations, and I think we need to check them. If Sprint goes away one day I'm not sure what I'll do.
EDIT: You know what I'll do? I'll say screw the paradigm, and start looking into VOIP, and other alternatives, and encouraging everybody else to do it so economies of scale work out.
Great, and that's precisely what should happen: the consumers should make their complaints heard ... not competitors who are (usually) just complaining about having not made such a good business decision themselves.
at&t is the other GSM carrier. If your lucky you might live in a place where you can get another regional carrier (U.S. Cellular, Virgin, etc) but odds are you'll still be stuck using at&t towers.
I'm aware of that, which is why I'm asking why it would be a duopoly. at&t will have a monopoly on GSM celluar service, and I'm left without options.
They're saying that all T-Mobile 3G devices would need to be replaced as well ( http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9M3LNPO0 ) which means that my Nexus One is a $550 paperweight, since it won't be useful on any US carrier. I won't even be able to resell it to recoup some of the cost.
O. Ok sorry about that. The duopoly comment is referring to the US cell phone market as a whole. Andrew was saying that because of the merger he believes Sprint and Verizon will be forced to merge, leaving only Verizon and at&t.
Definitely - competition played a huge role in making text message plans cheaper. With 1 less network that's available for consumers to choose from kills other chances of networks introducing agressive pricing, etc.
I have a feeling your comment will get dismissed as irrelevant snark, but I have a sinking feeling it's much more accurate than anyone would like to admit. AT&T is pretty well in bed with the government, which gives it political cachet that Google can't dream of getting without wrecking its credibility.
Fully agree with you, this whole NSA wiretap business isn't some low level tech grunt and a low level bureaucrat. If someone at the FCC/FTC gets a call from whoever authorized wiretapping the nation they'll listen. And if they start screwing around with the merger they'll get a call from exactly that person.
If Eisenhower was scared of this cabal the FCC/FTC will fold like a house of cards.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
SBC, which started out as a Regional Bell Operating Company named "Southwestern Bell", bought the old AT&T at firesale prices back in 2005 and assumed its corporate livery.
SBC and Southwestern Bell before it, never made a secret of thinking that the 1983 Bell System breakup was a mistake, and has spent the last 28 years trying to put the Bell System monopoly back into place.
So, yes, AT&T is a monopoly in the making.