New AT&T Acquires BellSouth 406
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."
Headline should read... (Score:5, Informative)
Hurray for fucking retard editors who can't be bothered to check headlines for accuracy.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Whining about it won't accomplish anything... (Score:4, Informative)
Fax or Call your Congressional Representatives.
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cdirectory/index.html [gpoaccess.gov]
Drop these guys a line.
http://ftc.gov/ [ftc.gov]
If you are intelligent and well spoken... call your local news and make a case for this being a bad idea.
Or, if you want to be an ineffective lump, go ahead and sit back and shut up... If you're going to complain, for god's sake aim your mouth in the right direction.
I challenge every voting Slashdot reader to actually do something about this one and send a fax in tomorrow. E-mail can be filtered and ignored, but choking the phone lines that serve them will serve as an ironic way of showing how unhappy we are with the prospect of this merger.
I am a customer of these organizations and I want this stopped in it's tracks.
will I get three bills for service I don't have (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wait a minute (Score:5, Informative)
Not since 2002, that was overturned. source [internetnews.com]
Re:Cincinnati Bell (Score:4, Informative)
Cincinnati Bell will be quite surprised to learn that it no longer exists.
Possibly the summary was referring only to companies that were part of the original AT&T and were spun off
as RBOCs way back when. Cincinnati Bell [wikipedia.org], despite it's name, was not actually part of AT&T; it was an independent company who licensed the right to provide service for the Cincinnati area.
Great Wikipedia chart of Bell System companies (Score:4, Informative)
If Verizon buys Qwest, we're down to two phone companies!
Re:They're trying to get it done quick. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Problem with that logic... (Score:2, Informative)
Well (Score:3, Informative)
Yes it is disturbing. Yes, it is threatening. But no it is not even close to half of what the Bell Network used to be.
I used to work at ATT in AntiTrust Litigation (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:Problem with that logic... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I say GOOD (Score:3, Informative)
Next time, take the word of someone who is old enough to have actually been there. I'm also barely old enough to remember rented phones and the Bell System Property tag on them. My grandmother kept hers for years.
Re:They're trying to get it done quick. (Score:3, Informative)
That may have been true once, but language changes over time. In common use, the word "democracy" includes democratic republics such as the USA. Don't take my word for it, of course:
PS: While we're being pedantic, apostrophes are not used for personal pronouns. "...has been from it's inception..." should be "...has been from its inception...".
Re:Wait a minute (Score:3, Informative)
No, the continual advance of technology brought down long-distance prices... In fact, it was the microwave communications systems, which AT&T invented, which made it possible for 3rd parties to provide long-distance service in the first place. Without that, companies like MCI would have needed to actually lay copper lines for each phone call across the entire country...
However, that's somewhat besides the point, because I was refering to local telco service... Long distance service can still be made competitive.
Re:Nationalisation (Score:2, Informative)
Oh, oops, that's right. Food is provided by many different providers, suppliers, packagers. Why didn't it make your list of important things? It's only with the establishment of the FDA and other redistribution and regulation agencies that corporate Agriculture has been able to consolidate and create monopolies.
Gee, there we go again! Government intrusion creates the very problems of consolidation and monopoly that get blamed on the "free market", long after the "free" part has been regulated out of existence.
Actually, I'm kind of happy that there's an FDA around, setting minimum food standards and prosecuting those who don't meet them. Our FDA isn't as good as the agencies they have in a lot of other countries, and a lot of dubious food gets by, but it's still better than nothing. If you don't believe this, try reading Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," to see what kinds of things they used to do to food back under the free market. Here's a hint... it turns out that lead chromate is cheaper than leavening in biscuits... and sawdust makes a great filler for sausages. You don't want to think about these things. The best part was, nobody knew what was in the food. There was no requirement for the companies to disclose this, because there was no government regulation of any kind.
Also, the free market naturally leads to harmful monopolies, "boom and bust" cycles, de-skilling and mechanization, and a lot of other bad things. It's just like any other incentive system-- it works well for some things but in others you need a different incentive system. This isn't a matter of philosophy-- it's a matter of economic fact. Put down that Ayn Rand and start reading the work of some serious economists.