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."

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.

Oh, no!

[SEWilco]

Say it ain't so, Ma!

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:So what was the point

[MillionthMonkey]

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.

Time to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Execute order 66 on the "new" AT&T.

Cingular - we barely knew ya

[geemon]

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.

Re:So what was the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that was said with the required dollop of irony. After all, that wheel will keep on turning...

Re:A long time ago in a galaxy far far away

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Why does this eerily sound like an actual Star Wars plot?

Because George Lucas has made a mockery of your cherished childhood memories.

Re:A long time ago in a galaxy far far away

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Probably because of the AT&T logo's resemblance to the Death Star

Re:A long time ago in a galaxy far far away

[unitron]

"Why does this eerily sound like an actual Star Wars plot?"

Where do you think the plot came from originally? Don't you remember that AT&T had their own Death Star?

Cincinnati Bell

[AubieTurtle]

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.

Cincinnati Bell will be quite surprised to learn that it no longer exists.

Terminator

[Anonymous Coward]

... only watching those piece reassemble.

You see... the Bells are the corporate form of T-1000 [wikipedia.org]...

Hasta la vista, Baby

[Anonymous Coward]

Why am I reminded of the scene from Terminator 2 where the T-1000 is blown to bits and the liquid metal droplets flow toward each other to self-arrange back into the T-1000 ?

T-1000 [auto-sfondi-desktop.com]

Oh

[PacketScan]

Shit.

Re:A long time ago in a galaxy far far away

[BobGregg]

>>Probably because of the AT&T logo's resemblance to the Death Star

When I worked at Bell Atlantic (Verizon) several years ago, my favorite joke was that AT&T might have had the Death Star, but by God, our spokesman was Darth Vader!

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

[Your Anus]

I find your lack of faith... disturbing.

Re:She's back

[sg3000]

> 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 [consumeraffairs.com] 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?

Obligatory Highlander Quote

[gbobeck]

"There can be only one!" (Connor MacLeod, amongst others)

Online petitions

[mnemonic_]

Hey, what about online petitions? Those work great.

Re:Whining about it won't accomplish anything...

[Anonymous Coward]

s/that/who/

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

[Austerity Empowers]

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.

Re:Headline should read...

[Odin's Raven]

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

They're what our Boy Scoutses sleepses in.

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

[dubl-u]

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:

[1-dollar]

In related news: AT&T says that SCO, Novell, and everybody else is wrong.... THEY own Unix.