Thanks to that *rick Michael Armstrong, who's only goal at AT&T was to make Michael rich, sold off the the best two assets they had; cable & wirless. Why? The supposed reason was because Wall St. got their panties in a wad over the high debt and dropping stock prices.
Kinda of makes sense to sell off your two growth areas doesn't it? Yea, that's what they teach in business school.
If the board had told Armstong to shove it, and held firm with Wall St. and cut costs in other areas, they could have ridden out their debt issues and have been competetive today.
Yes, they had a good business plan when they bought TCI and finally gained the "last mile" into folks homes. Between the cable and the wireless, they could have put together a full service telecom company. They were certainly better to do business with than either TCI or Comcast.
I suspect when the dust clears, if Southwestern Bell buys, it will be only a part and not the whole company. If they do buy the whole thing, it will not reflect well on the SBC management.