Our “little” baby bell is getting a new daddy!
At a special meeting today, the proposal was approved by more than 98% of the votes cast. Full story from TradingMarkets.com
“On March 5, San Antonio, Texas-based AT&T and Atlanta, Georgia-based BellSouth announced a deal, whereby AT&T, the largest U.S. telecoms company, agreed to acquire the country’s third largest phone company, BellSouth, for about $67 billion stock. […] When AT&T completes acquisition of BellSouth, it would set the stage for an all-out war between phone giants and cable companies.”
The new company is going to be called AT&T, and will be based in San Antonio, Texas. What’s old is new again.
To make matters worse, AT&T plans to kill Cingular brand.
So, let me get this straight, AT&T broke up into the baby bells and thus Bellsouth was formed, Bellsouth Mobility formed as the cellular/paging arm of Bellsouth, Bellsouth Mobility got renamed to Cingular when Bellsouth Mobility merged with Southwestern Bell (SBC) Wireless, AT&T wireless was taken over and merged into the Cingular brand owned by SBC and Bellsouth, SBC takes over AT&T in a weird child buys out the parent deal to become the new AT&T, meanwhile Bellsouth and the new AT&T are possibly combining to become AT&T all over again thus Cingular is becoming AT&T again…
Its no wonder the US telecom industry is confusing.
Yeah, I remember all those companies you listed above myself. The world of merger and acquisition is crazy. I still call Bank of America, Nations Bank – or even worse – C&S Bank, on rare occasions. Plus, years ago I was with PacTel, then Airtouch now, Verizon.
I guess the bottom line for me is how my service is going to be in the end. I still miss talking to the sweet little southern ladies that used to be on the end of the customer service phone at “Southern Bell”.
Yep, you are right, no more Southern ladies to talk to. All the “little ladies” you now speak to are now either computers or if you actually speak to a person you can be assured that they are in India. BellSouth no longer cares about their customers or employees in Atlanta and AT&T will care even less.