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阅读提示：AT AT there were many patent disputes.

AT&T, RCA, and their patent allies and partners finally settled their disputes in 1926 by promise. AT&T decided to focus on the telephone business as a munications mon carrier, and sold its broadcasting subsidiary Broadcasting Corporation of America to RCA. The assets included station WEAF, which for some time had broadcast from AT&T headquarters in New York City. In return, RCA signed a service agreement with AT&T, ensuring any radio work RCA started would he transmission connections provided by AT&T. Both panies agreed to cross-license patents, ending that aspect of the dispute. RCA, GE, and Westinghouse were now free to bine their assets to form the National Broadcasting pany, or NBC work.

In 1925, AT&T created a new unit called Bell Telephone Laboratories, monly known as Bell Labs. This research and development unit proved highly successful, pioneering, among other things, radio astronomy, the transistor, the photovoltaic cell, the Unix operating system, and the C programming language. However, its parent pany did not always capitalize on these achievements. In 1949 the Justice Department filed an antitrust suit aimed at forcing the divestiture of Western Electric, which was settled seven years later by AT&T's agreement to confine its products and services to mon carrier telemunications and license its patents to "all interested parties". A key effect of this was to ban AT&T from selling puters despite its key role in electronics research and development.

Public utility missions in all state and local jurisdictions regulated the Bell System and all the other telephone panies. The Federal munications mission (FCC) regulated all service across state lines. These missions controlled the rates that panies could charge, and the specific services and equipment they could offer. Noheless, technological innovation continued. For example, AT&T missioned the first experimental munications satellite, Telstar I in 1962.

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Erosion of natural monopoly

For many years, AT&T had been permitted to retain its monopoly status under the assumption that it was a natural monopoly. The rise of cheap microwe munications equipment in the 1970s opened a window of opportunity for petitors--no longer was the acquisition of expensive rights-of-way necessary for the construction of a long-distance telephone work. In light of this, the FCC permitted MCI (Microwe munications, Inc) to sell munication services to large-businesses. This technical-economic argument against the necessity of AT&T's monopoly position would hold for a mere fifteen years until the beginning of the fiber-optics revolution sounded the end of microwe-based long distance.

Break up, spinoffs and restructuring

The rest of the telephone monopoly lasted until final settlement of a 1974 United States Department of Justice antitrust suit against AT&T on January 8, 1982, under which AT&T ("Ma Bell") agreed to divest its local exchange service operating panies, in return for a chance to go into the puter business (see AT&T puter Systems). Although the Department of Defense did not want AT&T to be broken, effective January 1, 1984, AT&T's local operations were split into seven independent Regional Bell Operating panies known as "Baby Bells". AT&T, reduced in value by about 70%, continued to run all its long distance services, although it lost some market share in the ensuing years to petitors MCI and Sprint Corporation.

A sign that hung in many Bell facilities in 1983 read: "There are two giant entities at work in our country, and they both he an amazing influence on our daily lives . . . one has given us radar, sonar, stereo, teletype, the transistor, hearing aids, artificial larynxes, talking movies, and the telephone. The other has given us the Civil War, the Spanish American War, the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, double-digit inflation, double digit unemployment, the Great Depression, the gasoline crisis, and the Watergate fiasco. Guess which one is now trying to tell the other one how to run its business?"

After its own attempt to perate the puter marketplace failed, in 1991, AT&T absorbed NCR Corporation (National Cash Register), hoping to capitalize on the burgeoning personal puter and UNIX worked server markets, but was unable to extract lasting financial or technological gains from the merger. After deregulation of the U.S. tele industry via the Telemunications Act of 1996, NCR was divested again. At the same time, AT&T's equipment manufacturing operations and the renowned Bell Laboratories were spun off into Lucent Technologies. The industry as a whole had many other reanizations since the 1990s, both due to deregulation and because of technological advances reducing demand and pricing power in telemunications.

In 1997, AT&T hired former IBM executive Michael Armstrong as its chief executive officer. Armstrong's vision was to change AT&T from a long-distance carrier into a global "telemunications supermarket", eyeing Inter services for the booming dot- industry.

Armstrong's most prominent strategy was buying significant cable television assets. After acquiring John Malone's TCI and Media One (gaining through the latter a 25% share of Time Warner Cable), AT&T was the largest provider of cable television in the United States. It intended to use these assets to bridge the so-called "last mile" and break the Regional Bell panies' access-monopoly of the consumer household for data and telephony services, but the wager was costly, substantially increasing the pany's debt.

In 1998, AT&T announced a US 1 billion alliance with BT to offer global voice over IP (VoIP) services, sparking rumors of a potential merger [1]. But the parties fought for control of the project and could not even agree on the alliance's name. By mid-2001, customers were being directed to sign contracts with the parent panies, and Concert, as the venture was eventually known, was scrapped in October that year.

In 1999 AT&T acquired the Olivetti & Oracle Research Lab, from Olivetti and Oracle Corporation. In 2002 it closed down the research part of the lab.

With long-distance rates falling and the market for telemunications services overall weakening, AT&T could not sustain the debt it had incurred in these ventures. Moreover, the cost of upgrading TCI's equipment to handle two-way munications proved far higher than pre-merger estimates. AT&T undertook a major reanization in October 2000, moving its mobile phone and broadband units into separate panies, to allow each unit to raise capital independently.

On July 9, 2001 it

spun off AT&T Wireless Corp. in what was then the world's largest initial public offering (IPO). Later that year it spun off AT&T Broadband and Liberty Media, which prised its cable TV assets. AT&T Broadband was subsequently acquired by cast in 2002, and AT&T Wireless merged with Cingular Wireless in 2004.

In 2004, the U.S. government eliminated equal access regulations that allowed long-distance phone panies to access the works owned by the regional Bell carriers at fixed rates. This ultimately caused AT&T to move away from the residential telephone business--declaring in the process that it would no longer market residential telephone service. Instead, its residential focus shifted to offering a voice service over a broadband Inter connection called AT&T CallVantage.

Divisions

A division of AT&T, the Lucky Dog Phone pany provides a pay-as-you-go long distance phone service for in-state, state-to-state, and international calls with charges added to the caller's regular monthly phone bill. Under the name 10-10-345, Lucky Dog sponsored the &emsp45 Winston Cup car driven by Rich Bickle in 1999.

Southwestern Bell Fredom Phone products are not produced by AT&T but are produced under license by Conair.

Nicknames

AT&T was also known as "Ma Bell" and affectionately called "Mother" by phone phreaks. Spinoffs like the Regional Bell Operating panies or RBOCs were often called "Baby Bells".

The AT&T Globe Symbol, the corporate logo designed by Saul Bass in 1983, has been nicknamed the Death Star in reference to Star Wars. This name was also given to the titanic Bell Labs facility in Holmdel, New Jersey, now owned by Lucent.

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SBC munications

Southwestern Bell Corporation was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating panies, or "Baby Bells." The pany — a holding pany for Southwestern Bell Telephone pany — was a result of U.S. antitrust action against AT&T in 1983. AT&T had adopted the name Southwestern Bell for its local operations in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas in April 1920. The Telemunications Act of 1996 allowed Southwestern Bell to bee a national telephone provider, and it subsequently bought fellow Baby Bells Pacific Telesis and Ameritech, as well as independent Bell System franchise S.

In 1995, Southwestern Bell changed its name to SBC munications, Inc and sucsequently adopted the now well-known SBC logo. The pany stated that "SBC" no longer stood for anything. SBC then proceeded to acquire fellow Baby Bell Pacific Telesis and former independent Bell System franchise S(Southern New England Telephone). The FCC then blocked SBCs further expansion for fear of a monopoly. SBC told the FCC that it would allow petitors access to local markets where it had had a monopoly if the FCC would allow them to acquire Ameritech. The FCC later fined SBC munications  6 million for failure to ply with agreements made in order to secure approval of the merger.

In May 1998, SBC and Ameritech, the Regional Bell operating pany serving Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, announced merger plans. After making several anizational changes (such as the sale of Ameritech Wireless to GTE) to satisfy state and Federal regulators, the two merged on October 8, 1999.

At the time of the AT&T merger, SBC provided local telephone service in 13 states (Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Wisconsin) and long distance service to 10 million customers, and owned 60% of mobile phone provider Cingular. Cingular acquired AT&T Wireless in 2004, making Cingular the largest mobile phone service in the United States, with over 50 million subscribers. (Fellow Baby Bell BellSouth owns the other 40% of Cingular.) The pany was also a large American Inter Service Provider, and the largest DSL provider in the US, with more than 5.1 million DSL lines in late 2005.

The pany formerly traded on the NYSE as "SBC".

Creation of AT&T, Inc.

On January 31, 2005, SBC announced that it would purchase AT&T for more than  16 billion. The announcement came almost 8 years after SBC and AT&T called off their first merger talks and nearly a year after merger talks between AT&T and BellSouth fell apart. AT&T stockholders, meeting in Denver, approved the merger on June 30, 2005. The U.S. Department of Justice cleared the merger on October 27, 2005, and the Federal munications mission approved it on October 31, 2005. The merger was finalized on November 18, 2005. SBC announced that the name of the merged pany will be AT&T, Inc., and it adopted an updated logo. The merger means that BellSouth is the last "Baby Bell" to retain its original name (the other six "Baby Bells" he all merged with other panies and thus received new names). The merger is ironic in the fact that one of the "Baby Bells" grew to the strength to buy out "Ma Bell" AT&T. A further irony is that the government, which mandated the breakup of the original monopoly AT&T in the first place, ge the go-ahead to allow AT&T to reconstitute much of itself in this merger.

On December 1, 2005 the bined pany began trading under the historic "T" stock ticker symbol on the NYSE.

Bell Operating panies

Of the 24 Bell Operating panies in which AT&T owned or held a minority interest prior to 1984, nine are now a part of the "new" AT&T:

Illinois Bell

Michigan Bell

Ohio Bell

Indiana Bell

Wisconsin Bell (f/k/a Wisconsin Telephone)

Southwestern Bell

Pacific Bell (f/k/a Pacific Telephone & Telegraph)

Nevada Bell (f/k/a Bell Telephone pany of Nevada)

Southern New England Telephone—Now wholly owned, AT&T held only a minority interest before 1984.

Corporate GovernanceAT&T's current board mainly consists of members of SBC's board of directors.

Edward E. Whitacre Jr. - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Gilbert F. Amelio

August A. Busch III

Martin K. Eby, Jr.

James A. Henderson

Charles F. Knight

Lynn M. Martin

John B. McCoy

Mary S. Metz

Toni Rembe

S. Donley Ritchey

Joyce M. Roche

Laura D. Tyson

Patricia P. Upton

Places/Events named after SBC/AT&T

Jones SBC Stadium - Lubbock, Texas

SBC Red River Rivalry - Dallas, Texas

Note: These places are subject to name changes now that SBC has changed its name to AT&T.

AT&T Park - San Francisco, California (formerly Pacific Bell Park, SBC Park)

AT&T Bricktown Ballpark - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (formerly Southwestern Bell Bricktown Ballpark, SBC Bricktown Ballpark)

AT&T Center - San Antonio, Texas

AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic - played in Dallas, Texas, at the Cotton Bowl stadium.

AT&T's petitors

Sprint Nextel Corporation

BellSouth

Qwest

Verizon

Equant (France Télé)

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