That is incorrect. I worked with the old AT&T for decades. It was a great client to work for, and their service was first class. When divestiture occurred, the operating telephone companies were divided up geographically into small units. Over the years, the "baby bells" consolidated. Verizon is one of the largest of these new entities, and in some ways the closest to the old "Ma Bell."
The research and other telecommunications companies were largely spun off as Lucent, which has since imploded. What remained was designed to be a manufacturing company, aimed at the computer markets, primarily business computers. Their products were horrible, however, and AT&T collapsed. They sold off most of their computer business, and bought a small wireless company which they rebranded as AT&T wireless. That company was totally unrelated to the old telecom, and clashed with the corporate culture. Another of the old telecoms was Southwestern Bell, which grew faster than Verizon and eventually became the largest provided of land line phones. After the new AT&T spun off its cell phone company as AT&T wireless, what little was left of the old giant was sold to Southwestern, which mostly acquired its rights to the AT&T name and logo. Finally, Southwestern bought the failing AT&T Wireless, which always was a separate company, and merged it into what was then called "the New AT&T." That company shares virtually none of the personnel or corporate culture off the old AT&T, which for all practical purposes disappeared decades ago. By most independent evaluations, Verizon has the best cell phone service in the US, and the new AT&T the worst. The latter was supported for years by its exclusive contract with Apple for the iPhone, but now both market that very popular product. AT&T and Verizon together dominate the telephone business of the US. If they were to merge, that would in some respect resurrect the old Giant, but one can never put Humpty-Dumpty together again. Dan On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 10:53 PM, John Sessoms <jsessoms...@nc.rr.com> wrote: > From: "Daniel J. Matyola" > It's the same AT&T that was left after being forced to divest the local > operating companies ... which for the most part they've acquired once again. -- Dan Matyola http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/danieljmatyola -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
