looks like ma bell is re-assembling

looks like ma bell is re-assembling

first AT&T sold off to wireless to Cingular. then turned around and purchased Southwestern Bell. Now AT&T is getting ready to purchase back Cingular.

looks like anti-trust and monopoly don't exist in same regulation any longer.

Thousands of jobs have been lost in the shuffle and more will be gone in next phase. Great for getting retirement/medical liabilities off balance sheet, but not so good for employees or customers.

looks like honey moon is over with pricing going up on basic wireless services to $39 for cheapest option.

I'm still on the $19 ($25 w/tax) but service is getting so bad, they are forcing me to switch to new GSM service. (get one bar signal strength in middle of Tulsa) which lowest price is $39. for me this means a forced doubling of cost for wireless services.

still cannot believe this adminstration has allowed this and other mega mergers to happen.

not much we can do but pay...

:thumbsdown:

I was with ATT wireless for years, (and its predecessor). I stayed not for cost, but voice quality. It degraded substantially when it shifted from analog to digital, but I tolerated this loss due to the substantial improvement in run time.

My daughter was originally with Cingular, and the voice quality and ability to access were so bad, she changed to ATT W. As expected, when Cingular purchased ATTWS, voice quality dropped DRAMATICALLY, ability to access is definitely not better, and prices are rising. Coverage in OH where some of my family live is definitely poor to unavailable, even in reasonably dense areas.

I am searching for a new wireless carrier, and it will be (someone else - TBD). I use this phone for voice quality, not for wireless internet. There are other methods for that which are far superior IMHO.

I noticed this too, feels like a great big amoeba pulling all it's psudopods back in!
Voice quality sucks on pretty much all of the different systems 'cause they are overcompressing the signal to carry more on the same bandwidth. BLECH!

The wife and I keep hoping for a day when the cells are just a flat rate like the landline but by then the flat rate will probably be $500 month or some such stupidity.

Actually, Cingular (Southwestern Bell Wireless) bought AT&T Wireless, then Southwestern Bell bought AT&T.

This is on the heels of Verizon (my employer) buying MCI.

These buyouts are creating verical monopolies, no doubt ... but they're preferrable to horizontal monopoly.

Idleprocess is correct.

Also, ATT changed there cell platform from TDMA to GSM because they were looking for a buyer. All the people in the running were on a GSM platform.

Not trying to be funny, but VZ wireless is the most reliable in the NYC metro area.

Funny thing is that MCI was a resller of VZW cewll service. VZ (which owns 55% of VZW) is buying MCI and getting back all those customers...

Makes me glad I live where I do. I used all of the carriers and have found none to be as good as cellular south.

I used to be on the phone to cingular (what idiots intentionally misspell their name?) at least once a week. I've had to call CS 1-2 times in 3-4 years.

They remained up through and after katrina, and this included the gulf coast!

This is what happens to big companies. They get successful and make a lot of money, and then management thinks they need to do something with that money rather than just do a better job, so they buy up other companies and try to merge things together which never works. So as the companies grow, they make less and less money as their system gets more and more screwed up.

Finally they are forced to sell themselves off again, they get small, reorganize with less management, get back to the business of making money again by providing a service or product and start to grow all over again.

Even in my short lifetime I've seen this cycle nationally twice and much more on individual company levels

I think that the CEO's should just be forced to give the huge profits back to their share holders anybody that doubles the size of a company by purchasing another company should be sacked for fiduciary irresponsibility

idle, thanks for the clarification. so cingular and SWbell are the same company. bottom line is this is bad for employees and customers.

"The break up of Standard Oil mirrors a more modern monopoly breakup - AT&T - The Bell System. Both developed a ubiquitous brand names: Bell for telephone ..." http://www.us-highways.com/sohist.htm

now both mega-companies have esentially been allow to join back together. all within the last four years.

call it windfall or not, we've all seen the huge profits generated by Oil companies already. now get ready for same to happen by the new ma bell.

now say thanks to the folks that allowed this to happen...

I have VZ Wireless and am pretty happy with it but true prices are going up. My $35 Contract ran out and they keep trying to get me to re-up but the cheapest plan with included minutes and free nights and weekends is now $40. I don't see anything cheaper from other carriers that I have investigated. Do any of them have the free nights that start before 9:00?

It's getting close, but no where near being what it used to be.

The SBC + ATT entity is still 1/2 the size of the old AT&T. Don't forget, Verizon is the old GTE plus most of the other parts of AT&T.

Before the AT&T breakup, GTE covered huge portions of the US. After the breakup, they were the largest telco in the US (IIRC).

As for monopolies.... The AT&T monopoly had all land and cellualr voice comunication within it's geography as part of it's public trust. The new telcos don't have control of all datacom, voice or wireless in their areas.

I seem to recall that rule of thumb calls it a monopoly when you control 90% of the market or when you can use your market to control the other markets. Microsoft has a monopoly. GM does not. Neither does the new AT&T.

BTW, don't forget that monopolies are not always bad. A government granted monopoly for the public good does often work. I used to pay 6.50 a month to lease a phone that worked many, many years without any problems. It was acknowledged as the best phone system in teh world AND the cheapest at the same time. Now I pay that much just in the taxes that allow all these other companies to compete.

Personally I like monopolies that serve the public. I certainly see no benefit to paying for a CEO at AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, Nextel, Cingular, Nynex.........

gadget, agreed certain monoploy are good and needed. like gas, water, electric etc. those monopolies have government controls set in place to limit profits. result is public good for the most part.

unlike the colossus of SWbell, BP/amoco, phillips/conoco, etc which are under no such control. who's obligation is to deliver max return to shareholders. Well that means it's their duty to cut off all liablities possible from their balance sheet and return max profit possible.

this of course mean axeing all possible employees with long term benifits and increase all profits possible by raising prices much as possible.

during mergers all employees understand their employment is at will and some will run rather than wait to get axed. another tactic is to move headquarters knowing a large percentage will not move. this again reduces longterm liabilities off of the all important balance sheet.

another tactic to get folks off balance sheet is to outsource entire divisions and rehire same folks back under unbrella of say a consulting company. entire IT divisions have been shed this way without losing function of mission critical operations.
if I were the CEO, I would do the exact same thing.