Absolutely agree. AT&T and companies like MCI lost their viability last year (finally). It took AT&T many bad moves, and MCI its bankruptcy as a fraud, but they still had some hope if they were allowed to resell local service under favorable terms. When the government decided last year that the local service reselling will be based on whatever the local phone company wanted to charge, AT&T and MCI lost any opportunity to bundle their long distance and their local, and therefore lose a marketing advantage they could have had. The Baby Bells won that political game and now AT&T will become part of one of them.
Not so sure what will happen to MCI.
There's a slight overlap in the long distance market between these 2 companies. SBC is a startup in that market. AT&T is established, and lately more so in the Business Services side rather than the Consumer Services side. There are no glaring anti-trust issues here.
The pre-1984 AT&T also included their telecom equipment arm (Western Electric). That became Lucent and all its spinoffs after 1996. Baby Bells will not become equipment makers ever again.
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Absolutely agree. AT&T and companies like MCI lost their viability last year (finally). It took AT&T many bad moves, and MCI its bankruptcy as a fraud, but they still had some hope if they were allowed to resell local service under favorable terms. When the government decided last year that the local service reselling will be based on whatever the local phone company wanted to charge, AT&T and MCI lost any opportunity to bundle their long distance and their local, and therefore lose a marketing advantage they could have had. The Baby Bells won that political game and now AT&T will become part of one of them. Not so sure what will happen to MCI.
There's a slight overlap in the long distance market between these 2 companies. SBC is a startup in that market. AT&T is established, and lately more so in the Business Services side rather than the Consumer Services side. There are no glaring anti-trust issues here.
The pre-1984 AT&T also included their telecom equipment arm (Western Electric). That became Lucent and all its spinoffs after 1996. Baby Bells will not become equipment makers ever again.