Hmm .. May be they could have bought sbc/att/Comcast/twc? Given their valuation at that time, they could have bought pretty much anybody.
They bought Time-Warner in 2001 for $164 billion to create AOL Time-Warner. The expected synergies of the acquisition largely failed to materialize, the AOL name was dropped from the combined entity in 2003, and AOL was spun back out of Time-Warner in 2009.