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.
Re:Headline should read... (Score:2)
Re:Headline should read... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Headline should read... (Score:4, Funny)
They're what our Boy Scoutses sleepses in.
So what was the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what was the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem with that logic... (Score:2)
Re:Problem with that logic... (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, there are massive density economies in delivering cellular service (e.g. it's better to use a higher percentage of the capacity of one expensive tower vs. having four separate expensive towers running at lower utilization rates), and as such, there are efficiency gains that can come out of such mergers. We're more likely to see continuing consolidation in national cellular markets with a much bigger space for international competition. The companies want to move forward with consolidation, and the anti-trust authorities aren't really standing in their way.
In the US, the anti-trust people really only care about post-merger consumer prices (rather than the increased profitability of the merged entity). The degree of substitutable goods and the nature of price competition in cellular markets seems to keep downward pressure on rates. This is why they are letting all this go through.
As for VOIP (and the greater economy), you only need two firms to get good competitive results from these types of goods. Landline phones and VOIP are essentially homogenous products, and as such, it's perfectly logical to assume that people will go with the firm that offers them the best price/quality ratio. Outside of collusion, odds are good that you will see competition putting downward pressure on prices in landline telephony even if both landlines and VOIP are delivered by monopolies.
Re:Problem with that logic... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Problem with that logic... (Score:2, Interesting)
When a company begins to own more than one component of the system, free markets go bye-bye.
Something similar is occurring right now in the midwest with livestock
Re:Problem with that logic... (Score:2)
Re:Problem with that logic... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention AT&T would then have control of the bigger half of cellular customers in America (Cingular/AT&T Wireless). The last step would be their re-acquisition of Verizon (which would be epic at this point, as Verizon just acquired MCI, which was one of the companies AT&T flagged as a "competitor" in their earlier anti-trust proceedings).
So as a consumer, I can see this leading down a very dark road for consumers.
Re:Problem with that logic... (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps now the nature of recent attempts to create a tiered internet is revealed as a stalking horse.
Since these guys are going to have to make some sort of "compromises" in order to pass regulatory scrutiny, what better compromise than to sacrifice something they don't have anyway? Make a bunch of noise about multi-ti
Re:Problem with that logic... (Score:3, Interesting)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't Cingular and Verizon already lease tower space from each other to cut down on costs?
In this case, density economics don't play anywhere nearly as big of a factor.
Re:So what was the point (Score:2)
Re:So what was the point (Score:2, Funny)
Re:So what was the point (Score:2)
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:A long time ago in a galaxy far far away (Score:2)
Re:A long time ago in a galaxy far far away (Score:2, Funny)
Because George Lucas has made a mockery of your cherished childhood memories.
Re:A long time ago in a galaxy far far away (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A long time ago in a galaxy far far away (Score:4, Funny)
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:A long time ago in a galaxy far far away (Score:3, Funny)
Where do you think the plot came from originally? Don't you remember that AT&T had their own Death Star?
Re:A long time ago in a galaxy far far away (Score:2)
She's back (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:She's back (Score:2)
Re:She's back (Score:4, Funny)
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?
Oh, no! (Score:2, Funny)
Well, all I have to say is: (Score:5, Funny)
When do I sign up for actually renting my telephone again?
*sigh*
Re:Well, all I have to say is: (Score:2)
Wait a minute (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wait a minute (Score:2)
Re:Wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
When did we EVER have competition? Except in the biggest markets, people have never had any choice for their local telco.
The only difference between now, and when it was a monopoly, is that they go by a different name in different areas. They're still just matching each other's prices, terms, etc.
The whole idea of a telco is antiquated. Now, at least we're seeing competition to the telcos via cable and wireless providers.
It probably was ju
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
Re:Wait a minute (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, when you buy a SpeakEasy line, that's what happens. You buy the line from SE. SE buys a slot on the local DSLAM and pays to have it connected to your loop. Because SE is buying 1000 lines at a time, they can get them cheaper than if you bought it directly from your RBOC.
Re:Wait a minute (Score:5, Informative)
Not since 2002, that was overturned. source [internetnews.com]
Not quite (Score:3, Interesting)
The really scary part is the recent FCC decision to classify DSL as an "information service" that does not have to support independent ISPs at all, a decision that gives the Bell operating companies free a complete exemption from common carrier rules that were written to prevent Ma Bell from engaging in precisely the type of behavior that th
Re:Wait a minute (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wait a minute (Score:2)
Re:Wait a minute (Score:2)
I say GOOD (Score:2)
Re:I say GOOD (Score:3, Insightful)
You must be a young'en. Let me tell you about how it was back in the day. Ma Bell used to charge a monthly rental fee for each and every phone in your house. Not each line into your house, each phone hooked up that that one line. Want another phone in another room for convenience? You have to pay for it. Each and every month. You weren't allowed to buy your own phone, you were forced to rent theirs.
Ma Bell coming back is NOT a good thing for consumers.
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.
Inevitable. (Score:5, Interesting)
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. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Inevitable. (Score:2, Insightful)
Innovation happens because some shmoe "entrepreneur" smells a profit. If "entry costs" are high, it will require something extra to enter that market. Usually, this is done through innovation rather than trying to beat the established player at their own game.
Wired vs. wireless is a good example of this. Yet still, local governments have extended their monopoly grants to cell phone providers to prevent that very innovati
Re:Inevitable. (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Nationalisation (Score:3, Insightful)
There are onlt a few such services. Electricity, water, sewage, air, and landline telecommunications. You cannot allow the free market anywhere near these services. If you do, service will degrade, people will suffer and your economy, and indeed society, w
Re:Inevitable. (Score:2)
That does not require a monopoly grant.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Cingular - we barely knew ya (Score:2, Funny)
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.
The return of Ma Bell.. (Score:2)
Wait ten years and Verizon will merge with AT&T to form the new Bell Telephone Company.
Not quite (Score:2)
Although they don't compete for residential service, Lucent Technologies, formerly known as Bell Laboratories, is also one of the children of the original AT&T.
Re:Not quite (Score:2)
Re:Not quite (Score:2)
will I get three bills for service I don't have (Score:5, Informative)
Cincinnati Bell (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Cincinnati Bell (Score:2)
Forgive me for ignoring the little people.
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.
Judge Green (Score:4, Insightful)
Hasta la vista, Baby (Score:3, Funny)
T-1000 [auto-sfondi-desktop.com]
Predictably enough... (Score:2, Insightful)
In other news, the zombie of Harold Greene has been reported roaming about the countryside vandalizing telephone booths, muttering something about 'Humpty Dumpty' and a monolith somewhere...
Oh (Score:3, Funny)
Cingular Wireless to be rebranded too (Score:3, Interesting)
From MSNBC [msn.com]: After spending millions of dollars to rebrand AT&T Wireless Services Inc. stores as Cingular stores and hundreds of millions of dollars more on marketing the new Cingular after its $41 billion acquisition of AT&T Wireless in October 2004, Cingular will now become AT&T if the merger with BellSouth is completed.
So for all of those who at one time had AT&T Wireless as your cell provider and stuck with them through the Cingular Wireless purchase and are still with them, you'll now be moved back to the (new) AT&T brand. I would have been one of them had my compnay not switched to T-Mobile 3 weeks ago.
This deal might just bring down SBC! (Score:5, Interesting)
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:This deal might just bring down SBC! (Score:3, Insightful)
The part that you left out, additionally, is that this lack of talent is exactly what the public wanted.
We want 6 cents per minute? 5? 3? 2? People aren't free - and you know full well how much a *competent* lineman or switchman costs. Given the promise of an automated "smart" system that is run by monkeys, or a legacy labor-intensive, skill-based system that requires "experience" (e.g. TIME)... Cheap, Fast, Correct: Guess which two we (the customers) picked.
In short, we're getting exactly what
2600 had a nice cover about this (Score:4, Interesting)
Crazy that is was a year and a half ago. But still pretty topical. And I'm pretty sure those of us old enough to remember the days of many RBOC's can identify with the statement.
Great Wikipedia chart of Bell System companies (Score:4, Informative)
If Verizon buys Qwest, we're down to two phone companies!
Breakup was along the wrong lines. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time for another breakup, and this time it should go as follows: the RBOC's (soon to be the One Big BOC) maintain the physical cable plant, and they maintain the central offices basically as colocation facilities. Then, you have carriers (none of which are allowed to be RBOC's [or the imminent One Big BOC]) as colocation customers in those central offices. They lease customer loops from the BOC/LEC/whatever and then they provide "telecom services" over those loops. We don't care what the services are -- dial tone, DSL, whatever. No distinction between voice and data, between local and long distance, whatever, because as we know, it's all the same crap now.
THAT is the perfect way to keep the government-granted monopoly working efficiently for consumers. The monopoly must extend only as far as it needs to, and no further.
Re:Breakup was along the wrong lines. (Score:5, Interesting)
Member-owned cooperative (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I see the future.... (Score:3, Interesting)
GJC
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
Southwestern Bell, AT&T, and BellSouth (Score:3, Insightful)
I took a chance with SBC local phone service two years ago. I tacked on DSL for convenience, but soon regretted it. Every encounter with SBC has resulted in pain and grief. There were numerous misbillings. As soon as I had the chance to switch, I cancelled my service. I will never ever go back to them. I had the same experience with old AT&T. In fact, I currently do not use a land line. If I were to get one, I would use one of the cable companies.
I don't know how these companies can make or sustain profits when they treat their customers like they treated me. There must be some financial shenanigans occurring behind scenes. You can't run a successful business by pissing off your customers.
I'm all for this as long as... (Score:3, Interesting)
The new SBC, ATT, Bellsouth, Cingular, whatever will run fiber to my house like Verizon is doing [wikipedia.org].
Their current Project Lightspeed [sbc.com] is dead before arrival.
Conglomo... we own you (Score:3)
Re:They're trying to get it done quick. (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:They're trying to get it done quick. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They're trying to get it done quick. (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They're trying to get it done quick. (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the USA of yesterday that broke up Ma Bell was a democracy, and the USA of today that is letting it remerge like a T-1000 is a plutocracy.
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 fro
Re:They're trying to get it done quick. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They're trying to get it done quick. (Score:5, Insightful)
It does bother me quite a bit that they will have near total control of the DSL market.
Re:They're trying to get it done quick. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:They're trying to get it done quick. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not even close. The biggest thing is competition in the local phone market. Now the copper-loop provider competes in more and more markets with the cable provider, and is starting to compete with the power provider. Soon new providers may be offering Wireless Local Loop. AT&T also is far from having a monopoly on long-fiber: gas companies, power companies - even Google - have that stuff. It is this type of inter-modal competition that means it makes sense to merge. You have to bulk-up to compete. Not merging would be suicide.
At the end of the day, it is very likely the consumer will buy all of their communications products (voice, video, data, and mobile) from a single provider, and competition will be in the bundle. If providers don't offer all four, buying from them will make about as much sense is a buying from a car maker that sold the entire car minus the wheels and seats.
It is in fact de-regulation and intense competition that make this move necessary.
Re:They're trying to get it done quick. (Score:3, Funny)
I find this pretty implausible. If they were actually facing real competition, wouldn't they suck slightly less?
Re:They're trying to get it done quick. (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Well (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, the environment is considerably different now, and just as AMTRAK has a monopoly on passenger rail but hemmorages money, I'm not sure that a
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.
Online petitions (Score:3, Funny)
Re:They're trying to get it done quick. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:This can't be good for the consumer. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This can't be good for the consumer. (Score:4, Insightful)
Less competition = less push for innovation, higher prices, and every reason Bell was broken up in the first place.
No, it was broken up because of an antitrust suit brought by MCI. The sad part was that AT&T was one of the most innovative companies in the world. Witness the transistor - a Bell Labs product. If anything, the monopoly hurt them because they were not (because of regulations) allowed to take advantage of their innovations outside of the telephone market.
What they did have was something that's been dropped - service. You needed a phone installed, it was done, and done quickly. Have a problem? Fixed. Need to talk to someone about an issue? There was someone on the end of the line. Compare that today's "advantages". Need a phone installed? Wait a week or two. Got a problem with your line? Maybe they'll get around to fixing it in the next month. Have a problem with your bill, or need to talk to someone about an issue with your phone service? Welcome to the support hell of pushing buttons, listening to recorded messages, pushing more buttons, and maybe at the end of it you'll get to talk to someone who may speak English. (sarcasm) Oh yeah, we're so much better off!(/sarcasm)
Re:This can't be good for the consumer. (Score:2)
Re:This can't be good for the consumer. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:While I know... (Score:2)
Like Canada?
Re:While I know... (Score:2)
The only excuse these days to even have land lines is for 911 service, which is pointless when