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Comment by samfisher83 | Hacker News Reader

Cingular is descendant of the original AT&T.

http://crooksandliars.com/files/vfs/2011/03/AT&T.jpg

Indeed. And there's the whole SBC part to the story as well. But the entity that was AT&T in the early 2000's still went belly up and was bought out largely for the logo and those three letters and a single ampersand :-)

The Entity that WAS AT&T became

Southwestern Bell - became AT&T inc by buying Ameritech, AT&T Corp. Pacific Telesis, BellSouth (all Baby Bells)

Bell Atlantic/NYNEX - merged to become Verizon buying GTE, MCI Worldcom along the way

US West - merged with Qwest, acquired and became CenturyLink

"the original AT&T" is those Baby Bells not just the empty shell that became AT&T Corp. (aka ATT Long Distance)

The takeaway is that the ORIGINAL AT&T split into 3 companies and swallowed GTE, MCI, Worldcom, and Qwest in the process. It ended up being a consolidation. 4 of the 7 baby bells are back together operating under the AT&T name, that's over half the old company.

In the early 2000's there was the "original AT&T", a separate wireless company called AT&T Wireless, then Cingular who was the wireless group/division of SBC (Southwestern Bell) and SBC themselves.

Consolidation started with Cingular buying AT&T Wireless. Then SBC bought AT&T and simply kept the AT&T brand. Eventually the Cingular brand went away and they went back to AT&T and AT&T Wireless.

Wheeeee! The AT&T of today is basically SBC with all the old assets rolled in. SBC bought AT&T, not the other way around.

Source: worked there through it all

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