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New AT&T Acquires BellSouth
spune writes "Only months after SBC's acquisition of AT&T last November, the newly rechristened telecom has announced that it plans to buy fellow Baby Bell BellSouth Inc, of Atlanta, Georgia for $67 billion. This action by AT&T will consolidate more than half of the original Bell System into a single entity, leaving only Verizon and Qwest as remaining Bell family competitors. Analysts predict this deal will be approved by the FCC with only minor restrictions on the new company, which will serve residences and businesses from California to Florida."
War!
The Republic, with the help of its Jedi soothsayers, foresaw trouble ahead, leaving Ma Bell in one piece and to her own devices. Ma Bell fought back with all her might, but was torn to pieces by the deadly lightsabers of the Republic.
Several decades later, inefficiencies in having separate phone systems have led to the collaboration of those separated parts. Their merger begins anew their gradual domination of the Republic's phone systems. This time, the Republic isn't so concerned.
Say it ain't so, Ma!
I for one welcome our "Old Is New Again" phone overlords.
When do I sign up for actually renting my telephone again?
*sigh*
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The original breakup took place in a different political climate, when wrong ideas were popular. Now that right ideas are popular, we must systematically unravel anything that was accomplished back then.
Execute order 66 on the "new" AT&T.
Interesting that this deal consolidates the two owners of Cingular into a single entity. According to the report, all wired and wireless services will be brought to market under the AT&T brand name.
All that time and enery to build the Cingular brand and now poof - in a year when the deal is closed, they will rebrand again back to the AT&T name. Seems like it was only a little over a year or so ago when my local AT&T Wireless store was relabeled with the Cingular name.
I hope that was said with the required dollop of irony. After all, that wheel will keep on turning...
... only watching those piece reassemble.
You see... the Bells are the corporate form of T-1000...
T-1000
Shit.
I find your lack of faith... disturbing.
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
> The New AT&T could probably buy Lucent for a medium sized bag of P-type ringers.
And by lining his grave with magnets, they can use the power of a furiously-spinning Judge Greene to charge their backup batteries.
I hesitate to think what's going to happen to the big telecom infrastructure vendors. When their customers merge, can it be far behind for Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson, Lucent, Marconi, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel, or Siemens?
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
"There can be only one!" (Connor MacLeod, amongst others)
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
Hey, what about online petitions? Those work great.
s/that/who/
Funny, the original death star (see the AT&T logo) was destroyed nearly 22 years ago. Now, a new one is being built, right in front of our faces.
They're what our Boy Scoutses sleepses in.
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
It is in fact de-regulation and intense competition that make this move necessary.
I find this pretty implausible. If they were actually facing real competition, wouldn't they suck slightly less?
In related news: AT&T says that SCO, Novell, and everybody else is wrong.... THEY own Unix.