SBC wants to buy AT&T for 16bil
posted January 27th 2005 12:25PM
Someone at SBC must really want to get back together with AT&T—first SBC's joint-venture with BellSouth (a little company you may know of called Cingular) consumes AT&T Wireless, but now SBC Communications wants in on AT&T. The whole thing is kind of antithetical to the whole Baby-Bell breakup of 1984, but SBC (who is, incidentally, one of the Bell breakoffs from AT&T) is apparently in talks with its former parent for a possible $16 billion buyout. True, it's possible this could be post-jealous lover thing, since BellSouth made a bid for AT&T in 2003 and backed out last minute, but it makes sense being that SBC apparently wants to beef up its home-broadband and data services, and if nothing else, AT&T's already got the most comprehensive fiber backbone in America. Not to mention their clear delineation between home and business services, respectively. We're telling you, the telecommunications industry is getting so seedy and incestuous these days.
The question is what would happen to VOIP if the acquisition was to go through?
AT&T's error in all this was to head towards segregation of it's divisions (cable, wireless, phone, data), when convergence/mergers was all the rage.
Now wouldn't it be cool to have a company that offered cable w/ broadband, and VOIP that worked on that as well as over their wireless network?
#2, AT&T's error was choosing long distance, rather than local toll, as its core business. if at&t had spun off eight separate long-distance companies and kept all the COs, it would still be the powerhouse it used to be.
at&t overpaid for all of those assets you'd have had them keep, and did not purge their executives when they did buy them. so they overpaid for assets they failed to properly integrate... and mike armstrong is still free to screw up another company.
SBC wants AT&T for their business accounts as well as the brand name. It would also be a pre-emptive attempt at prohibiting AT&T from relaunching a new wireless division when their name licensing agreement expires with (SBC majority owned) Cingular that came about when Cingular acquired AT&T Wireless. Or maybe SBC really thinks adopting AT&T's name is worth $16 billion after I tagged SBC as standing for "Suck Ballz Corporation" online last year...tee hee... It really is too bad that Vodaphone panicked when SBC raised their share offer for AT&T Wireless last year. That would've strengthened the competitive market instead of contracting it.
I'm just wondering when Cingular will have its name changed (back?) to AT&T Wireless.
Of course, Cingular is about the only decent brand name SBC owns, and there's the whole BellSouth issue, so maybe AT&T Wireless will stay dead.
Of course, eventually they should drop the whole concept of considering "wireless" to be a different entity. Landline, broadband, cellular, video and the like will just be "communications", and your AT&T bill will cover it all.