Posted on 03/13/2006 4:04:16 PM PST by RWR8189
March 20, 2006 issue - Never count out a brand. Not long ago the once great AT&T name was headed for the boneyard, as was its former chairman's daring strategy of milking a cash-cow business for money to bet on fast-growth telecom. Now, as we see from last week's $90 billion telecom deal, both the AT&T name and its strategy are back. Big time. Who'da thunk it? When SBC Communications made a deal last winter to buy the shrunken remnants of faded blue-chip AT&T, it said it would eliminate the brand. Both AT&T Wireless and AT&T Broadband had previously been sold to buyers who gave up the name. Lights out for AT&T.
Surprise! SBC, a regional phone company serving 13 states, decided in November to scrap its own name and become AT&T. "No one outside our service area knew what SBC meant," says James Kahan, senior executive vice president for corporate development at SBC... oops, I mean AT&T.
When AT&T finishes buying BellSouth for about $67 billion in stock and $23 billion in assumed debt, AT&T will regain its status as the biggest name in telecom. The nation's biggest wireless company (54 million customers) and landline-phone company (71 million lines in 22 states) will be called AT&T. And AT&T will remain No. 1 in long distance.
When you crunch the numbers in this deal, you realize that not only the AT&T name is back. So is that old AT&T strategy of using money generated by a high-return but fading business to finance forays into faster-growing fields. "It's the same strategy and the same name," Kahan said when I raised the point with him, "but it's not the same company."
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Ma Bell up from the canvas!
AT&T: We'll be a monopoly again!
Is Judge Green still alive ?
Thanks for explaining why my SW Bell phone bill now says AT&T. I feel like a dummy for not tracking regional news better.
It's impossible to escape from TPC, isn't it?
My SBC bill just came with AT&T logo.
Not only that, I called remnant AT&T to change to an unlimited long distance calling plan due to Mom and brother being sick and lots of long distance bills.
They gave me a real deal!! And backdated the phone bill to cover the last week since my last statement.
However, they still can't bundle my local SBC service with my AT&T long distance and send me one bill. Lady said that the merging of bills was about a year away.
Everything old is new again.
A rather circuitous route to merely move the headquarters out of the corrupt NYC and the related costly union problems!
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