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."

Comments

Headline should read...

[Spazntwich]

"AT&T puts into motion plans to acquire Bellsouth."

Hurray for fucking retard editors who can't be bothered to check headlines for accuracy.

Re:Headline should read...

[Spazntwich]

Well, in English, we have certain things called "tenses."

Tense is generally used to indicate a timeframe relative to the present when something happened, is happening, or will happen.

Notice how in the article, they state that AT&T is planning on acquiring Bellsouth. If you read further, you'll notice other sources say the FCC approval process could easily take around a year.

Because, if this is going to happen, it will be happening in about a year, saying "AT&T acquires Bellsouth" creates a tense error, and if you want to really get technical, yes, it is a fairly big deal especially if you consider how significant the error is.

So what was the point

[DaveInAustin]

Of the original breakup anyway? The baby bells are buying each other and Ma bell.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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.

Well, all I have to say is:

[Chas]

I for one welcome our "Old Is New Again" phone overlords.

When do I sign up for actually renting my telephone again?

*sigh*

Re:They're trying to get it done quick.

[lordkuri]

What really has me kinda worried, "AT&T" will now have a *very* substantial portion of the DSL market under their thumb. A lot of smaller (and some larger) cable modem providers are getting their upstream lines from AT&T Broadband.

Now sure, they're under contract, but what happens when those contracts run out? Will we see another @Home debacle while the cable co's scramble to replace their uplinks, and ultimately end up paying a lot more for comparable connections and as a result, end up being forced to charge a helluva lot more to provide the same services?

Inevitable.

[Bob_Robertson]

The old AT&T government granted monopoly was never really ended. The so-called Baby Bells maintained government granted monopoly status over their respective regions, a monopoly status that is still in place.

One of the most corrupt forms of merchantilism, these monopolies insulate the phone companies from competition and create the environment for them to simply buy each other all over again.

The only thing Judge Green would have needed to do all those years ago was repeal (and prevent the states from reestablishing) monopoly protection of AT&T. Let competition come in where ever the established service provider was not providing decent service, or was charging too much, or anything and everything else that different providers use to compete for your, and my, business.

But no, the regulators wouldn't release even slightly their death-grip on the phone systems, not really, so local monopoly grants continued. Now they're buying each other and the "anti-monopoly" types have the gall to act surprised.

There is no such thing as a "natural" monopoly. Even Microsoft must continually innovate (or at least make people think that they innovate) in order to keep their customers. Only government is able to grant monopoly status, as was done with railroads, electric utilities, telephones. If some company is dominant in a field without those legal grants, they can only do so because they serve the customers better than their competition.

I don't mean "provide better service", because even as Windows came to dominate I was already using Linux and understood that Windows was not providing "better service". I mean serving their customers better, by better serving their subjective wants whether an outsider would consider them objectively "better" served or not.

Bob-

Re:Inevitable.

[squiggleslash]

You need to charter one ship across the Atlantic to compete with the East India Company. It's a one-off, and you'll make a profit.

You need to lay an entire network to compete with an established phone company. The phone company you're competing with already has laid, and paid for, that company. So while you take twenty years to build your network and 40 to recoup your investment, you'll be somehow raising that money from customers who have the choice between your network, and the cheaper incumbent.

How the FUCK do you compete with that? Are you on the same planet? There's absolutely nothing whatsoever you can do. If you promise "better service", the incumbent has plenty of time to improve their services. If you promise enhanced features, the incumbent can roll that out to all their customers before you've laid the lines in a single street.

This isn't a myth. It's real. It's why nobody's building fully competitive networks, even in countries where it's encouraged. In Britain, the only competition was from cable TV companies, who were only able to get their networks built because BT was banned from selling television services. And I've never heard of someone asking to build a competing network and being told "no" by any American government. Why? Because nobody wants to.

The only "competition" we'll see in the short term is from the cable companies. In the long term, we don't even know for sure that the cable companies and the telephone companies will not merge anyway. And we already know that a duopoly isn't enough to ensure buyer-focussed products.

We need regulation. And we cannot wait for libertarian utopias to be proven idiotic, especially since I've never come across a libertarian who hasn't find something government related to blame any failure of deregulation upon. The wires should work for us.

will I get three bills for service I don't have

[anagama]

Four years ago I made the mistake of signing up w/ AT&T. I cancled and paid off my bill (something like $14). Now, every four months I start getting bills, then the calls. I ignore them till they catch me. Then I ask for immediate acceleration. If I don't get it I curse a little (I've been doing this 3x/yr for 4 years now -- I'm not normally an asshole). Eventually someone says they see the problem and correct it. Every time I'm told this. And inevitably, the bills come back. Last time, when the person was through "fixing" it (I've since started getting bills again), she asked if I was interested in signing up for service. I laughed.

This deal might just bring down SBC!

[Anonymous Coward]

As the owner of the oldest ISP in South Carolina, I can honestly say that BellSouth's is full of crap about their estimated value of their lines and billing. We have 63 locations in Georgia, NC, and SC now, and in almost all of the locations, BellSouth struggled to even connect a simple T1. Very often, they had trouble even delivering a few POTS lines. Yes, we still offer 33.6 dialup in many areas since BellSouth is too incompetent to configure some of their switches to handle PRI. The only employees they have left have no experience and most are simply incompetent. My grandfather, father, and two of my brothers worked as repairmen for them. They've all retired or retired early. The only people still on the payroll have no idea what they're doing. They can't even troubleshoot simple POTS lines. Most of their local copper lines are complete crap. BellSouth really started cutting corners on the quality of their wires in the mid 80's. When looking for new locations to open a POP, I go to buildings built before 1980 since they have much better wiring to the building than the newer BellSouth garbage.

My mother worked in their payphone operation division. They were so incompetent, that that division went under in 2003. BellSouth couldn't even keep their own damn payphones working. According to my mother, at one time in her area over 40% of the BellSouth payphones were inoperable due to BellSouth problems. Payphones were first made in 1891, and BellSouth couldn't even keep that 100+ year-old technology working. Because of that my mother now works as a cashier in a grocery store.

About the billing. They bill us about 20 times (not a typo) what they actually should. I have an employee that spends almost full-time dealing with their billing screw-ups. WorldCom used to inflate billing like that...right before their billing claims were exposed a complete fraud. BellSouth certainly seems to be headed the same way.

You can summarize BellSouth by the outdated or inferior equipment, a very incompetent workforce due to layoffs and early retirement, substandard wiring, and inflated billing. I don't see this going well at all for SBC.

Re:They're trying to get it done quick.

[Your Anus]

I find your lack of faith... disturbing.

Member-owned cooperative

[core plexus]

My phone, internet, mobile, and DTV are all supplied by a member-owned cooperative (Matanuska Telephone). I used to have service through corporate suppliers, but switched years ago, and am glad I did.

The service costs less, and after the infrastructure and upgrades are paid for, I get a check back every year. Plus, we get to vote on stuff, and we own the company.

Only way to go, IMO.

Re:They're trying to get it done quick.

[Doc Ruby]

Bush is the president - responsible for running the country. The cruel irony is that Bush can be described only as irresponsible.

Bush was warned about Katrina's risk of flooding New Orleans, went on vacation instead, and resurfaced long enough to lie about no one anticipating the levees would fail.

He was warned about Global Warming, and instead has his administration gagging NASA scientists while presiding over the biggest increases in Greenhouse emissions ever. Now the ice is melting even faster than the scientists predicted.

Bush took office with Microsoft ruled a monopoly, and his Justice Department let them continue unabated. The years since have seen continuing abuses, but only foreign courts are doing anything about it, because Bush won't do anything to protect the market. A market that has remained unsafe for new competitors during his stewardship.

Bush was warned that Iraq would collapse into civil war, and now acts like its just a nasty surprise - while he isn't denying it's happening. He got a daily intelligence brief titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US", after repeated warnings from Clinton's outgoing team and Clarke, the counterterrorism administrator who stayed on. Then he acted surprised when his deprioritization collected the 9/11/2001 planebombings. He was warned before N. Korea got the bomb, before Iran got the bomb, that cutting taxes on the rich would keep the regular economy moribund, that screwing with the Mideast would keep oil prices sky-high.

So maybe you know something about Bush and the Superbowl that we haven't heard yet. Anonymous Cheney, is that you? Shouldn't you be at target practice, or something?

I used to work at ATT in AntiTrust Litigation

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I worked as a paralegal "research analyst" working directly for the lawyers involved, and I can assure all that the break up of ATT was not the defeat of some evil megacorp at the hands of some valiant heroic upstarts. It was an ugly battle by giant corporations, all of whom were evil Evil EVIL, when they weren't being incompetent and utterly stupid.

Did ATT deny MCI, Sprint, ITT, sonitrol, and everyone else involved access to their lines?

Yep.

Was MCI a giant grasping hellhole bent not on defeating ATT, but becoming ATT?

Yep.

Was Sprint an incompetent bunch of losers who couldn't find their own butts with a flashlight, a map, and both hands at the ready?

Yep.

Was Sonitrol along for the ride?

Yep.

Was ITT a vast corrupt corporation run by thugs?

Yep.

It's all there in the evidence - which fills a freakin' warehouse somewhere. Representatives of ITT threating people, Sprint incapable of figuring out how to bill their customers, MCI pulling all kinds of nasty shenanigans on ATT and other providers - and ream after ream of circuit listings noting that the denial of service was for "Reasons Unknown" - it was ugly. Truly nasty. There were no good guys in that case.

And now ATT wants to rebuild its empire. Well, it's a different world now with VOIP, Cellphones, cable modems, etc. Even if they do corner the DSL market, there's another market out there...

I don't if I should laugh or cry for all my wasted effort in that messy trial.

RS