Hammurderer

Yeah sorry I meant DaimlerChrysler :)

But the parent company (Benz) is losing money due to the deal. Obviously one side of even a poor merger will make out like a bandit. See: Steve Case & Friends in the AOL-TW deal.

cambie Unforutnately, it gave the impression to a lot of farkers that AT&T bought us out. I found it funny all of the worried phone calls I got from people asking if I was in danger of losing my job now that AT&T bought us. Uh, no, silly, SBC bought AT&T

Who cares ??

The parent bought out the Baby Bell or the reverse.

The result is the same: re-aquisition of former property; one way or the other.

altrocks: Verizon is the only one that hasn't acquired or been acquired

They just bought MCI in January.

Just FYI.....Verizon is selling off it's Yellow Pages Division to pay for the MCI acquisition...and is nearing a deal to sell of it's Dominican Republic and Costa Rica Telcos. This effort to extract value from these entities aligns them perfectly to make the next move in shoring up more of the wireless and broad band markets. The end result will be AT&T versus Verizon for both land and wireless services.

Who would have guessed that in twenty years that a large portion of the baby bells would merge and buy up their parent with a headquarter in San Antonio, Texas.

No one really answered my question.

My guess...the new company is a mega conglomerate named AT&T

poisonpill: But the parent company (Benz) is losing money due to the deal.

I don't think that's the case anymore. I think Chrysler's recent crop of cars have reversed the trend and Benz is now eating up Chrysler's profits.

The DC "merger" may have seemed like a bad deal initially, but it is probably the only thing keeping Detroit from having 3 failing auto companies any many more failing suppliers

08:40:23 PM Devolving_Spud
Anyone here remember what AT&T stands for??? Anyone...anyone...?
Yes! American Telephone and Telegraph! I wonder if they still do much telegraph business.

Not much, but the line conditioning specs for telegraph service are still tariffed.

The "I work for SBC/AT&T" cliche can be posted in this thread with sincerity.

Thank gwd, I missed Ma Bell.

"auto companies any many more failing suppliers"

That should be "and" not "any".

The amount of what people don't now in this thread is...well pretty much the same as any Fark thread.

So, who's going to get stuck with Lucent? Lots of really cool eggheads, some good ideas, and no profits.

/Would have killed to work at Bell Labs back in the late 60's/early 70's jsut to see UNIX be born.

If Judge Green were alive today, he'd be on a paid junket golfing with the corporate bigwigs.

FYI: AT&T stood for AT&T, they changed their name since they weren't in the telegraph business and most people didn't know what it stood for.

That's no moon.

In keeping with the spirit of rocinante721's post of above, here's my better (but not greenlighted) headline:

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced." AT&T to buy BellSouth, create new DeathStar

Is there something wrong with linking to a Yahoo news story? Or is breitbart.com somehow the new powerhouse of news reporting?

Oh yeah, and lordargent was on the same page, too. I just didn't reload before posting to see that.

Hammurderer
I don't think that's the case anymore...

Honestly I haven't looked into it recently, only studied it a bit back when the merger/takeover was only a year or two old. Back then the Germans were pretty pissed about Chryler turning out to be a company in trouble.

After a little research I see that Chryler is now making decent money, but now it's Benz's turn to be in the red.

Well anyway, my biggest fear is when telecom companies merge. Media superconglomerates control so much information it's just scary. People decide on who to vote for based on information the media decides to feed them and when it's just a handful of companies that give you that info, it can get distorted fairly easily.

I want Standard Oil back. Oh, wait. I have Exxon/Mobile. Nevermind.

One word: VOIP

lordargent: That's no moon.

Brilliant - almost spewed my beverage when I saw that.

The next change will be Verizon Communications buying-out Vodaphone's minority stake in Verizon Wireless. This makes sense because SBC (the new AT&T) was essentially buying the much smaller BellSouth to gain 100% control of Cingular.

Because this is a wireless flavored market now we should probably look for the next group of changes to follow wireless technology lines. That means the GSM standard AT&T Wireless (old Cingular wireless) might consider buying T-Mobile off of Deutsche Telecom since they share the same technology. To balance this Verizon / Verizon Wireless would likely acquire one or more of the following CDMA based companies - Sprint, Alltel, US Cellular. Although it makes sense for Verizon to make a play of Qwest, I don't think they will since Qwest has been suffering from some serious accounting issues. Of course Qwest's share price is in the shiatter, so maybe they will buy the company that no one else wants.

End result, Ma and Pa Bell. So don't expect any more price reductions.

Ed Whitacre (CEO: SWBT> SBC> AT&T) said he wanted to reunite the old AT&T before he retired this year. I thought the purchase of AT&T would be his last move. If any CEO earns his money, he does.

BTW, wireless is last year's news. Video over phone lines is teh new hotness;
Ma Bell providing phones and TV vs. Cable providing TV and phones. And Google will fit into this somehow. And Microsoft thinks they will, too.

superking:And from there, the sky's the limit! I get such a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that a hundred years from now, a single company will be able to make all our decisions for us.

Communism?

As an wireless internet provider who has to use SBC/ATT services to compete with them because it's the only way to get dedicated high-speed internet services. I'm afraid, and you should be too. There will be no competition when the only competition to land line telephone is cellular or VOIP which they ultimately control as well.

lordargent: That's no moon.




/Sorry, I couldn't help myself

I didn't even bother to read, but....

If you don't know what and AT&T 3B1 is without Google, STFU and get back to living in your parent's basement.

That is all.

Back in the day a monopoly was a bad thing. Now, it's different. How? I don't know. The government told me so.

Thanks' Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. Now, monopolies can run free an unfettered and the Chinese can fund it all. Yay America!

Ma Bell
Got the ill communication

Ma Bell
Got the ill communication

In all of this, I've never seen one single person mention t-mobile. Does that mean I'm safe?

Given the emerging telecommunications monopoly and the desire of Time Warner, Comcast et al to pluck your pockets for "pay-per-click", we're all going to be back reading Carterphone --
Linky thing.

yooper81: In all of this, I've never seen one single person mention t-mobile. Does that mean I'm safe?


madgonad: Because this is a wireless flavored market now we should probably look for the next group of changes to follow wireless technology lines. That means the GSM standard AT&T Wireless (old Cingular wireless) might consider buying T-Mobile off of Deutsche Telecom since they share the same technology. To balance this Verizon / Verizon Wireless would likely acquire one or more of the following CDMA based companies - Sprint, Alltel, US Cellular. Although it makes sense for Verizon to make a play of Qwest, I don't think they will since Qwest has been suffering from some serious accounting issues. Of course Qwest's share price is in the shiatter, so maybe they will buy the company that no one else wants.

And Bill McGowan is now spinning out of control in his grave, for the company he helped break up is rising once again.

Everyone knows mega-mergers always make the world a better place.

Look, I know this is against popular belief, but AT&T was not broken up by the US government in 1984. They did file suit against AT&T in 1982, however, it ended up that AT&T proceeded with a divestiture of many of it's assets; particularly local phone service. The day before the divestiture took place, AT&T was worth about 60-70 bucks a share. Afterwards it went down to 20-30 dollars a share, but each shareholder had an equal amount of shares for each engendered company that was created overnight. That's how AT&T became soley a long distance provider at the time and the other 7 companies begat by AT&T took over their respective regions of the US. The reason they did this was because each shareholder essentially tripled their stock value in one day. Instead of having 1 share of AT&T for about 60 dollars, the shareholder had one share of AT&T for about 25 dollars, one of Ameritech for 20, USWest 25, Bellsouth 30, SWB 35, Pacific Telecom 15, Nynex 18 and Bell Atlantic 20. (All estimates, but should be close enough - Note none of these are IPO's) The point is that all the actions were to INCREASE SHAREHOLDER VALUE. It is the fundamental reason for doing business (of course there are other considerations, but this is what it comes down to). If you want to know more, there's plenty more about AT&T's history to read about here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT_and_T

Just my two cents. =D

am I the only person that thinks all of this was planned when Ma Bell split? Split, make the govt happy, then gradually re-combine over the next 30 to 50 years?

Sound far fetched?

billdozer
remove the tinfoil
thanks.

themishkin:

So AT&T WAS broken up by the US gov't in 1984.

Reribane:

It was as a result of the indictment, but they did it on their own accord, not a mandate by the DOD. They made what looked like a bad situation into a profitable one. It is kind of splitting hairs, but it is significant because the USGov won't make these actions profitable for the company in question. Sorry for the confusion.

So my cellphone billing goes from AT&T wireless, then to Cingular , i combine billing with SBC, who then is owned by AT&T...

What the hell is going on here.

It has already started to suck..I got my March phone bill in a gaily decorated "AT&T/SBC" envelope and they jacked my SBC/Yahoo DSL basic from $21 to $51. I had (no choice) AT&T phone service when I lived in Boston years ago and both the phone lines and customer service were equally farked. I am going to call them in the morning and inquire about the sudden rate increase but suspect I will soon be calling the cable company back about cable internet. They also have a digital Vonage type phone with all the features and free long distance so with their package, I can save about $50 over AT&T/SBC inflated prices.

Oh, my new AT&T/SBC DSL bill went up from $26 to $66. I went ballistic on them and they did admit that they made a mistake and my bill is back up to $26. They said the merger made thier systems glitchy.

chicbicyclist
I used to work at At&t (american torture & terrorism we used to say) and the coming of the dawn makes their systems glitchy.

seriously, when I worked there our customer service systems were made in-house about 15years prior.

AT&T is stalking me. I worked for LA Cellular that got bought by AT&T. I quit to work for MediaOne wich then got bought by AT&T.

Thank goodness I don't work in Telecom anymore.