Nice rant. But since this isn't your blog you'll probably have to grace us with some substance. None of AT&T exists anymore--SBC acquired that corpse last year, so the company currently calling itself "AT&T" isn't even really "AT&T". The new deal is basically SBC buying up BellSouth and getting the rest of Cingular in the deal. I just don't see how this is all that different from the stream of M&As that produced Verizon back in the 90s. Sure it's a big deal, just like that one was. Another giant telco, hoorah. Nightsweats about the ghost of Ma Bell rising? lol no. On 3/5/2006 10:24 PM, Fergie wrote:
An overreach? Really?
I'd say that you're not paying attention.
And how do you come to that conclusion? By the fact that "very little" of the original AT&T is in the current monolith?
Well, given the entire 'two-tiered' money-grab-tastic issues involved, I'd say you're a little out of touch.
- ferg
-- "Eric A. Hall" <ehall@ehsco.com> wrote:
On 3/5/2006 7:10 PM, Steve Sobol wrote:
Eric A. Hall wrote:
What are people worried about here exactly?
The same lack of competition in telecommunications that we had in the 1980s?
Well that's an overreach. And if the primary concern is consolidation then we should have blocked NYNEX and Bell Atlantic from merging back in 1997, since this deal is basically SBC + BellSouth/Cingular, which is mostly indistinguishable from the earlier one.
I think people are reacting to the brand, the AT&T ghost really, since there's none of it left.
-- Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/