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SBC and AT&T Boards Vote to Go Ahead
telstar writes "As a follow-up to earlier coverage regarding the possible acquisition of AT&T by SBC, MSNBC is reporting that boards from both companies met to vote today and that the acquisition will go forward at a price of 16 billion dollars. Both companies are currently keeping the deal quiet."
Does it just rub me wrong that all these major companies are merging? If this trend really continues we could easily find ourselves with no choice on communcations period.
Bite me. Seriously, I enjoy it.
If I remeber correctly didn't we shatter Ma Bell into the baby bells once upon a time? It's like the liquid termenator in T2. It would seem they are all sucking themselves back togeather again.
Grep through your fortune files for references to AT&T.....it's amazing how many jabs are all too true now.
This is truly the end of an era.
Keep the faith, share the code
We are going to have to take a serious look at antitrust law in the United States. It seems like we don't ever enforce in a real way. We make moves to enforce it, we convict people, and then we stop short of solving the problem. There's one big instance of this I'm not going to mention to prevent dragging in a flamewar. But the instance here... we broke up a telephone monopoly, yet appear to have not in any way constricted either its horizontal or vertical monopoly power. SBC retains a monopoly in all the areas it does business in and has done so unbroken since the Ma Bell breakup-- Birch is nothing-- and now it's rejoining after a short break with Ma Bell. We do have successful competing long distance providers now but this may not last too much longer in Texas. Surely this breakup could have been done in a more intelligent way?
Well, Ma Bell was certainly being as bad, if not worse, than Microsoft. Forcing operating companies to purchase equipment from a subsidiary (Western Electric), routinely undercutting competitors such as MCI, and most importantly in this day and age of companies deciding what users can and can't do, doing everything to prevent users from using non-Bell equipment on their phone lines, despite an FCC ruling that the consumers had a right to do that.
On the other hand, perhaps all these consolidations of the Baby Bells are trying to tell us something - maybe that's just the way the market works. Certainly it would make life easier for consumers to not have to switch phone companies every 5 years. I've gone from New England Telephone to NYNEX to Bell Atlantic, and finally Verizon. And it's been barely 20 years since AT&T broke up. OTOH, service has suffered - I used be able to make a call from a pay phone for a dime in Massachusetts, even 7 years ago. Now it's 50 cents minimum charge, and you're lucky if you can even find a phone booth, let alone one that's run by Verizon and not one of these 10-10-whatever companies. Is that because the big companies don't care? Or is that because of cell phones become more commonplace? Who knows. But I bet in 5-10 years we'll be right back where we started, and someone will have been laughing all the way to the bank.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
I am tired of my internet access options coming down to "would you rather pay money to the local cable monopoly? or the local dsl monopoly?". I exclusively use a cell phone and I don't watch television. I don't particularly want to do business with either of these companies. If there were some third way to get Internet, I wouldn't have to.
P2P wireless isn't terribly realistic given the scaling issues involved, I don't think, but I would LOVE a commercial WiMax provider if it became a viable option.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I'm no fan of Bush, but it's not like this is a Republican thing. My phone company changed names 3 times under Clinton (New England Telephone->NYNEX->BellAtlantic->Verizon. (Well, Verizon was in mid-2000, so that's Bush, but the foundations of the merger were well underway by inauguration day.
We need to stop pretending that one party is pro-big-business and the other isn't. Politics is all about money, and only big companies can give the politicans the money they want.
The only difference between Republicans and Democrats is that one shits on your face while telling you you'll get a tax refund, and the other shits on your face while telling you it's the only way to save the environment.
the next economic model after capitalism will only take hold when capitalism can no longer support the population... however I do not think it will be communism like Marx says... i think that it will be corpratism.... no competition and one monolithic source of production.
if you look at the trends of economic development over the centuries, a slow and even evolution takes place... right now capitalism is being transformed into something else. people will no longer have property but will purchase all their needs from a central body, no, not the government like Marx said, but the corporation... a large monolithic corporation acts just like a communist government. it is responsible for all the welfare of the people who it serves and it serves the people because they all work for it. the government may get supplanted by the corporation at some point.
it sounds bad, but this form of economic system can either be good or bad. it will depend on the implementation... however, new economic transitions (real ones based on natural societal pressures) tend not to fall apart because they take so long to transition from one state to another, giving the society time to accept and learn how to support the system.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
It's retarded how many /.er claim to be Libertarians but the second you start talking real economics they turn into protectionists
I don't think it's "real economics" so much as that in some cases it's impossible to pretend the real world away so that you can pretend libertarian ideology describes reality.
The difference here is that i'm-libertarian-woo slashdotters have dealt with their local phone monopolies. This isn't some economic model, this isn't a discussion about what is philosophically better. This is reality. This is Verizon. And for the woo-libertarianism slashdotters, the knowledge of their personal experience with Verizon, or SBC-- and the personal knowledge that Verizon and SBC are not good things-- simply briefly overwhelm the ability to continue reciting the rote libertarian "The market never, ever makes mistakes" precepts.
Did anyone ever stop and think that maybe it is beneficial for these companies to merge?
Yeah, for the company. And this is universal, it has nothing to do with the communications industry. It's always better for the company to merge; there are always economies of scale.
The America of 1890 was a libertarian paradise. Guess what? That turned out to not be a good thing. Among other things, since it's always beneficial to the companies to merge, just about every single industry had one single trust controlling the entire thing. This is why we have antitrust laws in the first place. We tried Libertarianism and it turned out that what's good for companies isn't always what's good for America or Americans.
no barriers to entry
Don't follow the DSL market so well I take it? You could sum the entire market up in those three words. "Barriers to entry".
Quite. Especially as it's featured fairly prominantly on SBC's home page.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
"is it just me, or do they need to drop the name. i know it probably sounds nifty as an acronym to PR...but come ON..we dont even use telegraphs anymore. just drop the last T i guess. but "AT" doesnt exactly have a nice corporate sound.. but at least it doesnt sound 100 years old."
You mean like Twentieth Century Fox?