I'm just curious what everyone thinks about the SBC purchase of AT&T? I guess the obvious thing that stands out is the irony of a "Baby Bell" buying "Ma Bell", after "Ma Bell" was broken up because it was too big. What other comments and thoughts have others come up with? They keep commenting on our network news that this is bad for competition. Duh! The only good thing I see coming out of it so far is that those poor saps who let AT&T take over their local service have now maybe been saved, by being brought back to the local carrier.

Funny. I guess this is progress!

Retired AT&T here: 5 years ago, when AT&T started laying off techs and outsourcing and proclaiming what were tech jobs as management jobs, I said they were posturing to sell off. Having said that AT&T has the infrastructure to help any of the Bells to expand their services. I don't know if they can grow fast enough to beat out the growing interest in VOIP in broadband though. The corporate greed at AT&T did them in, they never let their idea of bundling get off the ground and the paid way over market for cable networks then jumped ship before the change could work. Quick money was the name of the game, hopefully SBC can use the network for quality and loyal service, something AT&T forgot.
Bill

Retired BellSouth
I went through the breakup. I feel we have lost
an American Icon. AT&T and Montgomery Wards were suppose to last forever.
JBW

I was wondering when someone was going to post a comment section on this merger. I have been tossing and turning over this one. Besides programming the switch my main job is dialtone traffic and contracts. In my 12 1/2 years in this position I have been bitten by many telecom companies but none as badly as SBC. They were always the greatest at pointing a finger at another provider when something went down, only to find out it was SBC's issue in the first place. I don't like what is happening here. I've been trying to move all of my business over to AT&T but had a few things yet on contracts with SBC. I guess my work is over on that. We need the competition and we don't need one huge company to take over again. I know very little about VoIP but I guess I'm going to learn, fast...

LOL, I can say I have never seen SBC and QUALITY used in the same sentence!

unless the word POOR appeared before it!

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WWW.THEBESTPHONESUPPORT.COM

Well I always said everything happens in cycles - but this one definitely a lopsided cycle. My stepson who has worked the last four years for Cingular Wireless (SBC sub) was told last week his whole group was getting the pink slip for replacement with AT&T folks. So it appears bottom line that SBC had the money to purchase AT&T management personnel and the MA Bell is recuperating from heart transplant??

I know this is way premature, but would the next step in the cycle be another breakup? Or would it be someone else buying SBC once they crumble like AT&T has. Or will a better idea (like Vonage) come along and end up buying SBC? I guess it depends on whether free market reigns, or whether government regulation steps in.

I think another thing that could happen is SBC buying a company like Vonage, to cut down on their competition. After all, now SBC will have their own interest in a VOIP solution with what AT&T currently has and is being bought by SBC.

This whole development is very interesting.

I went through divestature as an AT&T tech and watched the jobs go away, incuding my own. I seriously doubt if this merger will create jobs.
Screw the work force and pamper the FAT cats seems to be the agenda!

Rich

Funny, with all the take overs and buy outs, almost looks like in about 10 or 20 years it's all going to be one company again.

I worked with a lot of laid-off western electric guys about 20 years ago. They were all recently laid off from the biggest company in the whole world. A favorite saying was "there ain't no such thing as a sure thing". The economic media types blame AT&T's demise on their trying to keep up with Worldcoms (all recently indited) inflated earnings.

Thornhill hit the nail on the head! Soon "everything" will be One company. can you imaging that? and any competition will be bought out. Even the government will be a sub-division of XYZ company. Lets start a pool on what Company will win the Monopoly game. Microsoft perhaps? Maybe Blockbuster. Imagine buying a car made by AOL/Time Warner! Sky's the limit.

When the dust settles........it will be CISCO...

My bet is on Microsoft or Wal-Mart.

Yeah, Cisco...then we will get about 1/3 of our calls dropped and outages due to a server malfunctioning....bummer.

I hear so many people talking about getting burned by CISCO, yet I see their switches all over the joint.

Whatz up?

What are the problems that people run into with CISCO products?

They have BY FAR the best marketing I have ever seen. They cover their tracks like no other company I have ever seen on their telephone systems. You have to look REALLY hard and google to find bad things beacause they purposely spam the hell outa the search engines. It can do really cool things, but it lacks some basic PBX functionality while having bells and whistles that cost businesses money because they take away from th eemployees work time. It's the type of system that will nickle and dime you. Want to add MOH..OH that wasn't on your RFP..that'll just be an additional server $$$$ ching ching...and it goes on and on. Off my soapbox now.

so the problems from CISCO are with their phone systems?

Cause their network stuff is SOLID...

I thought their IP Phone stuff was top rated..

Actually their routers are top notch..although there are other companies that make better units IMHO..like adtran and do alot more. Ask some customers sometime about it. City of Dallas being one and see how many heads rolled and ONLY when IBM stepped in they got it working. Their ROI was millions in the negetive. Like I said you have to see some of the horror stories I have walked into. Let's put it this way, they can get away with alot because they simply use the word server, meaning computer. You know how that double standard goes.

I'd hope that SBC could fire all of AT&T's customer support staff and re-hire completely.

AT&T customer support is counter-productive and is completely non-user friendly. It can take a full morning to get a human being online.

All the best to SBC. I hope they make drastic, mcuh needed changes.

In todays paper it looks like Verizon is trying to buy MCI, looking to beat out Quest. See not long, One Company.

Found this excellent article in New Telephony magazine detailing a couple interesting points about the SBC & AT&T merge.

https://www.newtelephony.com/news/51h31154458.html

I think the VOiP is the big issue, lots of large businesses use AT&T frame relay circuits and AT&T has been selling their call vantage to these business to reduce LD and private line voice cost. My biggest concern it SBC going to go the way of AT&T in customer service and employee dedication or the other way around, they already announced as a merged company they plan on laying off 13,000, hard to keep top notched employees when the only loyalty is to the CEO's bonus check. Just my 2 cents

Hey, what happens to Bell Labs ?????

Bell labs is part of the deal …SBC offer the local in a few states AT&T ‘s local cover areas SBC is not in today. SBC will get a huge amount of international exposure and call center products and some BT products AT&T buys.
Do not be surprised to see a lot of AT&T best practices and service support implemented in 2006/2007 .
SBC is getting the best telcom company going

Actually I think SBC is getting the hollow shell of AT&T. Contrary to the news reports from AT&T management a vast majority of the traffic handled by AT&T still is moved by 4E switches, old cranky and currently unreplaceable. The fun part mes from the fact the current management at AT&T has managed to lay off all the technical people that designed and programmed the control systems for the 4E switches. Good look to SBC if it wants to make any changes to intergrate SBC network and the AT&T rtnr network.

cisco was rock solid untill there ios system
source code was dumped onto the internet.
by a hack to one of there suppliers which were using the code to build & test hardware. thousands, millons of routers at risk . even there patch dos not work & was exposed last week .cisco tryed to get the fbi to aresst the guy for showing how.cisco
and the ex sucurity analist came to terms
he promised not to demo in the future.even
if cisco does provide a good patch.how many
of these will not be upgraded .cisco's rock gotta crack in it.

SBC buys AT&T. After that Verizon buys MCI. After that Verizon buys SBC then they are bought by Wal-mart or even worse; some company from Europe.