Hacker News Reader

Comment by neelc | Hacker News Reader

Modern AT&T isn't really Ma Bell, it's SBC who bought AT&T and kept the AT&T name. That's why AT&T is based in Dallas and not New Jersey.

Ma Bell today is really AT&T, Verizon and parts of Lumen, Frontier and Consolidated.

AT&T also is worth less than Verizon due to bad mergers (DirecTV and non-cable Time Warner) which added a lot of debt, money that should've been used for fiber and 5G or even a bidding war against T-Mobile for Sprint if you had to buy your competitor.

View on HN

I work for (current) AT&T, in Atlanta. SBC also bought Atlanta-based BellSouth in 2006, and some of my coworkers who are ex-BellSouth complain that working for this company hasn't been the same since. But I haven't heard that as much lately - a lot of those people have retired by now.

Dont forget the takeover of Cingular. That always seemed to be when the old DNA was comprehensively switched out for the new. No more ATT with sleepy offices in San Antonio, now it was a mobile company based out of Dallas.

Yep - those were around the same time so I think people might find it hard to disentangle the two, especially when they’re just complaining instead of trying to do serious corporate history.

re: some of my coworkers who are ex-BellSouth complain that working for this company hasn't been the same since.

That would be correct and only natural. I started with Michigan Bell in 1977, went through divestiture, the assembly of Ameritech, then SWBT/SBC. The Bell System / along with Western Electric/Bell Labs was a great place to be. You could spread out the SD's to work on problems and end up talking with engineers/programmers. My bosses went from being in Michigan, to Wisconsin, to St. Louis, to NJ. So, yes, the jobs have changed, the coworkers have changed, the jobs have changed. Plus, we all missed Ed Whitacre when he retired.

I would add Nokia as well, as they have Bell Labs now due to Lucent->Alcatel-Lucent->Nokia mergers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com