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AT&T to Leave Residential Business

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the screw-you-guys-i'm-going-corporate dept.

Herve writes "Just got it from a press release on the AT&T website: 'AT&T will no longer be competing for residential local and standalone long distance customers. The company stressed that existing residential customers will continue to receive the quality service they expect from AT&T; however, the company will no longer be investing to acquire new customers in this segment.'"

5 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So Long Cell division, so long residential... by mrscorpio · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not exactly. Twenty years ago, ATT was THE phone company, encompassing what Verizon, SBC, Qwest, etc., are today. When they were split up, all those companies could only do local phone service, and ATT was the long distance company.

    Now everything's been all jumbled up, and everybody can do everything. So this incarnation of ATT is more like MCI or Sprint than it is Qwest or Verizon.

  2. Losing FTS hurt bad by Evil+Schmoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    A very, VERY big part of it was losing the biggest single phone contract in the world, the United States Government FTS (Federal Telephone Service), to MCI a few years ago.

    It is the maintenance of this contract that has kept MCI afloat despite its woes and which, coupled with AT&T's rapid expansion (TCI, etc.), has led to AT&T's dramatic fall in the residential marketplace.

    I would also guess that the extreme growth in cellphone and DSL use has hurt AT&T, since more and more people are using those technologies instead of POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) for home use.

  3. Re:Desolate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    AT&T offers perfectly reasonable long distance plans, as long as you actually pick one instead of getting the default. I use AT&T. I'm still on a plan for several years ago, and I get 5 cent weekend minutes, 9 cent weekday, no monthly fee. I haven't seen any other of the major brands that match that. (10-10-etc and calling cards certainly might.)

  4. Missing the reasons... by changa · · Score: 3, Informative

    Everybody seems to be missing the reason for this.

    While their service sucked AND they were annoying us with switch calls the real culprit was Bush and the FCC.

    http://gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/26319-1.html

    http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&tab =wn&q=fcc+bush+telecom+act+1996&btnG=Search+Ne ws

    They got rid of the regulations about unbundling the local copper so the local carrier can charge AT&T whatever they want.

    Expect others to leave that market soon as well.

  5. Death to the AT&T Death Star.... by Wizzy+Wig · · Score: 3, Informative
    Five or six years ago, my wife had to visit a sick friend a thousand miles away from home. Having experienced the ripoff LD rates in hotels while on business travel, I told her to use the "1-800-CALL-ATT" number so heavily advertised on TV. BAD MOVE! As it turns out, the fine print that flashes on the bottom of the TV screen for 500 milliseconds at the end of the commercial informs us that the low fixed rates are available only to users of the AT&T Phone Card. For anyone else, the sky is the limit.


    As it happened, my wife's friend took a turn for the worse and we spent 4 to six hours on the phone over the course of a few days talking over whatever it is she needed to "express" (women...). My wife used the 1-800-CALL-ATT number, telling them to bill the LD to our home phone. Imagine my shock and horror when the AT&T bill arrived singing a tune of almost $700. The heartless bastards had no mercy... any and all pleading for mercy ended "Well... that's what you owe us... pay up or else." It took me 3 months to get them to knock a couple hundred off just to close the matter out, but it was their deceptive advertising that caused the problem in the forst place.


    May AT&T's corporate soul, if it still has one, rot in corporate hell.