AT&T barely resembles the giant it once was. Before Divestiture, AT&T owned all the long lines (long distance), all the local Bell companies, the Western Electric manufacturing arm, and every last phone in the country. AT&T spun off manufacturing long ago to Bell Labs Lucent, which further divvied itself up in the 90's, spinning off its Enterprise unit to Avaya and making Lucent primarily a maker of Central Office switches. AT&T now consists only of a long-distance fiber and microwave carrier and a cellphone unit, and they're merging that away as we speak. There's really not all that much left of a once-proud company. And soon there won't be ANYTHING left of them, because they still have that Al Qerry arrogance about them. I was just talking to a co-worker about AT&T this week, how they seem to be in a death spiral. So, they've sold off their cash-cow Cable and Internet business to Comcast, and now their cash-cow Wireless business to Cingular...to focus on what? What's left? Long distance land-line?
Don't make me laugh.
After all the money from the sell-offs dries up, then what?
"After all the money from the sell-offs dries up, then what?" Like I said in an earlier post, they'll either complete die off or they'll go commercial trunk - providing fiber and perhaps satellite feed service. A business-to-business model. They've run so far from any consumer business that I don't think they have any other choice.
Michael