Welcome back, Ma Bell

Eric A. Hall ehall at ehsco.com
Mon Mar 6 05:44:33 UTC 2006



Nice rant. But since this isn't your blog you'll probably have to grace us
with some substance.

None of AT&T exists anymore--SBC acquired that corpse last year, so the
company currently calling itself "AT&T" isn't even really "AT&T". The new
deal is basically SBC buying up BellSouth and getting the rest of Cingular
in the deal. I just don't see how this is all that different from the
stream of M&As that produced Verizon back in the 90s.

Sure it's a big deal, just like that one was. Another giant telco, hoorah.
Nightsweats about the ghost of Ma Bell rising? lol no.


On 3/5/2006 10:24 PM, Fergie wrote:
> An overreach? Really?
> 
> I'd say that you're not paying attention.
> 
> And how do you come to that conclusion? By the fact that "very
> little" of the original AT&T is in the current monolith?
> 
> Well, given the entire 'two-tiered' money-grab-tastic issues
> involved, I'd say you're a little out of touch.
> 
> - ferg
> 
> 
> -- "Eric A. Hall" <ehall at ehsco.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/5/2006 7:10 PM, Steve Sobol wrote:
> 
>>Eric A. Hall wrote:
>>
>>
>>>What are people worried about here exactly?
>>
>>The same lack of competition in telecommunications that we had in the 1980s?
> 
> 
> Well that's an overreach. And if the primary concern is consolidation then
> we should have blocked NYNEX and Bell Atlantic from merging back in 1997,
> since this deal is basically SBC + BellSouth/Cingular, which is mostly
> indistinguishable from the earlier one.
> 
> I think people are reacting to the brand, the AT&T ghost really, since
> there's none of it left.
> 

-- 
Eric A. Hall                                        http://www.ehsco.com/
Internet Core Protocols          http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/



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