Travel Journal

This is so ironic. With the recent merger of SBC and AT&T, I was like, didn’t we split them up? Here is some more information from wikipedia.

AT&T, based in San Antonio TX, split into eight regional bells in the 80’s. One of them was Southwestern Bell. Southwestern Bell ( SWB ) eventually merged with some of the other regional bells. Then it changed its name to SBC (Southwestern Bell Communications), or SBC Communications. Now, it has bought AT&T and merged back in with it.

“The merger was finalized on November 18, 2005. SBC announced that the name of the merged company 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” have all merged with other companies 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, gave the go-ahead to allow AT&T to reconstitute much of itself in this merger.”

Here is some more information on the “Baby Bells”

* Ameritech … (AT&T)
* Bell Atlantic … (Verizon)
* BellSouth Corporation
* NYNEX … (Verizon)
* Pacific Telesis Group … (AT&T)
* Southwestern Bell Corporation … (AT&T)
* US West … (Qwest)