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SBC will become AT&T on Monday

11:00 - Friday 18 November 2005 by Scott M. Fulton - source: Tom's Hardware

By absorbing AT&T, San Antonio-based SBC’s tentacles will now reach into every major segment of the U.S. communications market. The crown jewel of the deal is AT&T’s market-leading corporate services business.

For AT&T, the merger saves the company from a potentially bleak future of declining sales and market share in the face of stiff competition from new communications companies or alternative technologies. (MarketWatch)

Up to now, SBC has been classified as a Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC), having been created through the breakup of the old AT&T’s original Bell System in 1980. Southwestern Bell, as the former Bell System operator was originally known, later merged with two other RBOCs formed from the breakup, Pacific Telesis and Ameritech.

A spokesperson for Lucent Technologies contacted me late today to correct some of my facts about the latest and last breakup of AT&T, so I thank him and stand corrected on the following : AT&T spun off its Western Electric and Bell Labs division in 1995, thus forming Lucent. (Avaya was spun off from Lucent in 2000.) In 1993, after having appeared to fall behind its competition in the emerging cellular arena, the company absorbed McCaw Cellular / Cellular One, launching AT&T Wireless in most of America.

The year 2000 saw the last vestige of "Ma Bell" voluntarily spinning off its own long distance telephone, cellular carrier, communications equipment, and broadband businesses. AT&T Wireless was recently absorbed by Cingular Wireless, which is itself a joint venture of SBC and BellSouth, another RBOC. The broadband business became absorbed by Comcast in 2002 ; and AT&T’s computing business, having been acquired in the 1980s through the acquisition of NCR, is now known as NCR again. With the acquisition of long-distance company AT&T by SBC, the venerable brand was about to pass into history, though SBC officials apparently had a change of heart.

The new AT&T, which formally comes into existence on Monday, will also sport a completely new corporate logo. The current Saul Bass design, nicknamed even by company insiders the "Death Star," will fade into the annals of history with the once-ubiquitous Bell. But rescued from a similar fate will be AT&T’s NYSE trading symbol, which will remain the classic "T" - the oldest stock trading symbol in America.

How the name change will affect the branding of joint ventures, such as SBC Yahoo ! DSL, will apparently also be learned on Monday.