More AT&T/BellSouth Details

Only $28 million for running that gets sold and all those hard working people with families will get laid off. Duane is getting ripped. He should ask for $50 million for all that work.

I would posit that MORE people would lose their jobs in coming years if this deal wasn't done.

Oh, let's not even go there...

just add up the BILLIONS of dollars that have been spent employing lawyers, lobbysts, and Investment Bankers since before the AT&T breakup.

Can't anybody step back and see the irony of this. We could have saved this country's legal system an aweful lot of money just by pulling the plug on the monopoly...not by going through the fight to break it up...but by openning their wires to competition and letting them self adjust to the new business reality that ensued.

This is sooo ironic to see ATT, SBC, Bell South and others
amalgamating post breakup.

LOL... I'm not saying it makes sense or lacks irony

ok i'm going to say this one time. Lets say you spend millions of dollars of your money and thousands of hours of your time making something that is your own creation. Some pencil dick comes in and says all that hard work you did is nice but now you have to let someone else profit from it. WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would willingly allow someone to do that to them. Capitalism is a process of making money, the phone was an invention which everyone liked and NO one held a gun to your head and said you HAD to have one. Why should ANYONE but the people doing the work and building the network profit from their creation? I'm sick of all you morons who know nothing of our world except that " you need to let people in your network ". I think walmart is too big and they need to put a quickie mart in the center of each and everyone to foster competition and make walmart lower their prices. Lets see how that goes over!

Exactly what do you base that assumption on?

Competition equals more companies, and therefore more jobs. Less competition, less jobs. The market rewards anyone who slashes their bottom line, and the easiest thing for AT&T to do is eliminate any replicated positions/divisions as a result of the "merger".

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

"Exactly what do you base that assumption on?"

It's quite elementary. If you ever been involved in a re-org after a merger, you start out with two of almost everything. So you don't need two CEO, HR, Billing, Accounting, and so on. If people don't fit into the new model, then you're out. It's just a matter of time after the merger that job cuts will be announced.

um, his point isn't post merger, he said:

quote:

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I would posit that MORE people would lose their jobs in coming years if this deal wasn't done

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meaning, BEFORE the merger MORE people would lose their jobs. this has nothing to do with post merger consolidation, which I unsuccessfully skirted for about 6 months with another company...

So my point is, what is the assumption that more people would lose their jobs if this deal wasn't done?

'http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/06/news/companies/att_jobs.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes'

I rest my case!

Well, here in san antonio, at&t just annonunced 10,000 jobs going to be cut as a result of the merger, this per the local news channel

gotta love Monopoly

Then again he could leave with nothing! Sir, you're fired! Why? Cause we said so, what ye gonna do about it? Kiss our ass and wag your tail?

The main driver for the BS board of directors to approve this deal is the 17.9% premium BS stockholders are getting. The board could have been sued by their own stockholders for not approving something like this.

As to AT&T's motivation: you either grow or die in the global telecomm market. And also the AT&T CEO Whitacre has a huge ego and he wants to rule the biggest empire he can put together.

How about both, you grow and then die of overeating? Don't you worry my friends, Rupert Murdoch will eventually own everything

I wonder which company is next? Quest, Maybe even Verizon?

FYI: Qwest.

Verizon swallows Qwest?

If AT&T doesn't first

I'd LOVE that, then at least there'd be a possibility of getting FIOS.

verizon better then in ten years they will merge with att to fight the cablecoswhich will start their super mergers soon

i dont think they will let ATT expand any longer

looks like it's back to the future for broadband in the U.S. - we're all scrooged.

Hahaha this is not the end of competition, its just the beginning of it. ATT is trying to go heads up with comcast and other cable co's. Dont be surprised if speeds increase and prices decrease. Just because ATT now owns a majority of the phone lines in the us doesnt mean there isnt competition. Comcast and other companies HAVE VOICE PRODUCTS NOW + with the variety of cell phone companies out there this is by no means a monopoly. If they try to use there company as a monopoly and raise prices you can damn well bet that people will just leave. Not to mention the telephone lines are still open to competitors.

Also how can anyone defend this from a broadband prospective? What was BellSouth next generation network plans? oh it was "lets wait and see". At least att has some sort of plan.

That's what... 2 years of pay? F Duane has expensive tastes.

I am not trying to be a troll but I just could not resist
As for the merger with ATT and Bellsouth it kind of reminds me of what Emperor Palpatine said on Star Wars:

"Once more the Sith shall rule the galaxy (phone industry, Internet)! And we shall have peace."

Devestator is on the lose! Where is Superion when you
need him?

Hello Telco Monopolies! Looks like you're growing strong once again!

The face of telecom is different today, under telecom you can classify cable tv and telephone. The lines between legacy cable tv and legacy telephone is now blurring. In the eyes of the FCC there are now two front to compete Cable TV operators and the Bell Operating Companies. We're not losing any comeptition so much we are consolidating one industry to compete against another.

-Vincent

I still have only lines into my house, Comcast and AT&T. This is not competition. I can choose VoIP for voice or Covad for DSL but they still go over AT&T wires and are subject to AT&T access pricing or QOS extortion. The bigger they get, the easier it is to lobby Washington to eliminate 3rd party access, and real competition.

WTF is the FCC or FTC or who ever thinking letting these f'ckers get back together again? All I can say is if it dont bring me FIOS or Fiber Internet to my home I hope they all choke on there billion dollar mergers.

Well all I can say is I wish I could leave my company and get damn near 30 million!

What about all those people that lose there jobs? They will be told I'm sorry we paid your sorry ass boss a $30 million pension and can't give you your retirement ever!

that 28million is just the icing on the cake for the do nothing ceo.

quote:

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The deal certainly sheds new light on why BellSouth was so content to sit and watch AT&T when it came to deploying next-generation broadband and IPTV solutions.

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Beyond press releases, I'm not certain that the new at&t has provided anything to watch...

After everything shakes down, including the wireless industry which will continue consolidation as well, we will only be left with "communication companies", and probably only 4 who will offer all services:

AT&T
Verizon
Comcast
Time Warner

Verizon will gobble up Qwest shortly, and Comcast will most likely make a play for Sprint...

And Time Warner will make a play for T Mobile

After the MCI fiasco I don't think QWest's board would vote to be taken over by Verizon....Martians maybe...Verizon, Never!

Besides...it would weaken Verizon's bottom line.

Nia

Nope, Verizon has absolutely no interest in Qwest. Maybe Alltel for their wireless...hint, hint...

My feeling is Verizon may make a play for Comcast. It would take care of Verizon's video franchise issues in most markets. Verizon already has the "triple play" it just lacking video customers in any number. A merger would fix that very quickly. Along with giving Verizon better content deals. In fios areas Verizon could just move all Comcast subs to fios-- dramatically lowering acquisition cost per sub for fios.

Verizon does not want to be the number two player. I would not be a bit surprised if they are looking at Sprint too.

I looked at the NYT article including the "Building of an Empire" timeline. Does anyone have a USA landline telco map (.JPG or URL) of who is where as the "Building of an Empire" map in the article does not have enough detail.

For example, I know Verizon is also here in North Texas and I know not all of Tennessee is BellSouth, etc. Thanks in advance.

NEW YORK - AT&T Inc. plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs, mostly through attrition, if its $67 billion purchase of BellSouth Corp. goes through, AT&T's chief financial officer said Monday.

The work force reduction would take place over three years, AT&T's Rick Lindner said on a conference call. The acquisition is expected to close next year, pending approval from shareholders and regulators.

Before the cuts, the combined company would have around 317,000 employees, including Cingular Wireless LLC, which is now an AT&T-BellSouth joint venture.

The 10,000 planned cuts are in addition to the 26,000 job cuts AT&T has already announced _ 13,000 due to SBC's acquisition of AT&T Corp., which closed in November, and 13,000 due to "operational initiatives." The combined SBC-AT&T took the name AT&T Inc.

San Antonio-based AT&T expects the acquisition announced Sunday to save it $2 billion annually at first, increasing to $3 billion a year by 2010.

Slightly more than one third of the savings would come from reduced labor costs and consolidation of support functions and corporate staff, Lindner said. The combined company would be based in San Antonio.

More savings from the proposed acquisition would come from reduced advertising expenses and combining the backbone network and information-technology operations of the companies.

The deal is effectively a merger of three companies that now operate separately, since it gives AT&T total control of Cingular, the nation's largest cell-phone provider.

"Over the last couple of years as we have operated Cingular and our Yellow Pages venture, it became clear that there was a lot of duplication that could be eliminated," said Duane Ackerman, chief executive of BellSouth.

"This merger will allow us to move to a single brand for wireline, for wireless, for business and consumer, and that's AT&T," said Randall Stephenson, AT&T's chief operating officer. "A single brand is much more cost efficient and far more effective."

AT&T is paying 1.325 of its own shares for each BellSouth share. Based on Friday's closing price of $27.99 for AT&T shares, that works out to be $37.09 for each BellSouth share, an 18 percent premium from the Friday closing price of $31.46 for the company.

BellSouth shares surged $3.76, or 12 percent, to $35.22 in midday trading Monday on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of AT&T slipped 30 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $27.69.

AT&T plans to buy back stock worth at least $10 billion in the next two years, effectively paying for the premium given to BellSouth shareholders in cash, executives said.

The merged company would have 70 million local-line phone customers, 54.1 million wireless subscribers and nearly 10 million broadband subscribers in the 22 states where they now operate.

The deal would substantially expand the reach of AT&T, already the country's largest telecommunications company by the number of customers served. BellSouth is the dominant local telephone provider in the Southeast.

verison was formed by the union of gte and bell atlantic. verizon has cities dotted all over the country. Like for instance ATT has navada but verizon has las vegas.

the breakup in the 80's broke up att into 7 regional phone companies, now i find this funny, 4 of those 7 now comprise att. any bets on how long it is before we have grandpa's AT&T again?

The government will NEVER allow AT&T and Verizon to merge with them being HUGE wireless rivals. The only way it would be possible if they agreed to sell off one of the wirless networks .. perhaps to a cable company. .. and in exchange, they also get countrywide TV franchise agreements

they might cause they will be fighting off the Super cablecos mergers which will own sprint and all the volpco but I wouldnt want a dunopoly maybe a big 3 that provides everything phone, video, internet, and wireless cause I just love bundles you save more

A lot of people keep putting qwest into play with verizon, or At&t merger with verizon etc. This wouldn't happen. Verizon is very independent and has spent much of their money investing in CDMA wireless. Qwest on the other hand has no wireless network whatsoever, they are merely selling rebranded sprint at a higher price. So my bet would be on a qwest and At&t merger as they would be just acquiring the other businesses without having to mess with a different wireless technology as qwest could easily jettison their rebranded sprint service and go to At&t/Cingular. Also verizon doesn't own all of their wireless, vodafone is part owner so there could be problems there. As far as what I want to see, i want to see verizon take up qwest so I can have FIOS HAHAHA