AT&T
This article describes the present AT&T Inc. See American Telephone &
Telegraph for the 1885-2005 company.
AT&T Inc.
AT&T logo
Type Public (NYSE: T)
Founded 2005
Headquarters San Antonio, Texas, USA
Key people Randall L. Stephenson, Chairman/CEO; Richard Lindner, CFO
Industry Telecommunications
Products Wireless, Telephone, Internet, Television
Revenue $63.055 billion USD (2006) [1]
Net income $7.356 billion USD (2006) [2]
Employees 301,760
Slogan Your World. Delivered.
Website www.att.com
AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) is the largest provider of both local and long distance
telephone services, wireless service, and DSL Internet access in the United
States. The current AT&T, which is based in San Antonio, Texas, United States,
is the rechristened SBC Communications, following the purchase of its former
parent company, American Telephone & Telegraph. As a part of the merger, SBC
shed its name and took on the iconic AT&T moniker and the T stock-trading symbol
(for "telephone"). The corporation is considered SBC renamed.
Since the break-up of American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1984, most of
its major components have merged into three major US telecommunications groups:
Verizon, Qwest, and AT&T Inc. Most of these companies are made up primarily of
former components of American Telephone and Telegraph Company. For AT&T Inc,
these include many Bell Operating Companies and the long distance division.
AT&T Inc. was founded in 1983 as Southwestern Bell Corporation, headquartered in
St. Louis, Missouri. It was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating
Companies, or "Baby Bells." The company — a holding company for Southwestern
Bell Telephone Company — was created as a result of U.S. antitrust action
against American Telephone & Telegraph in 1983. It took full control of
Southwestern Bell Telephone on January 1, 1984.
In 1993 Southwestern Bell Corp. moved its headquarters to San Antonio, Texas,
and, during its annual meeting of stockholders in 1995, the company announced
that its name would be changed to SBC Communications, Inc. The name change was
an effort to reinforce the company's national and global reach and the company
not only stated that "SBC" wasn't an acronym for Southwestern Bell Corporation,
but that it did not stand for anything at all.
SBC then proceeded (as permitted by the Telecommunications Act of 1996) to
acquire fellow Baby Bell Pacific Telesis, the Regional Bell operating company
serving Nevada and California, in 1997 and the former independent Bell System
franchise SNET (Southern New England Telephone).
SBC then announced plans to acquire Ameritech, the Regional Bell operating
company serving Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, and told the
FCC that it would allow competitors access to local markets where it had had a
monopoly if the FCC would allow them to acquire Ameritech. The FCC agreed and in
May 1998, SBC and Ameritech announced the merger would move forward. After
making several organizational changes (such as the sale of Ameritech Wireless to
GTE) to satisfy state and Federal regulators, the two merged on October 8, 1999.
The FCC later fined SBC Communications $6 million for failure to comply with
agreements made in order to secure approval of the merger.
In 2002, SBC ended marketing its operating companies under different names, and
simply opted to give its companies different doing business as names based on
the state (a practice already in use by Ameritech since 1993), and it gave the
holding companies it had purchased d/b/a names based on their general region.
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