Illinois AmeriSBCingular&T
filed on Tuesday, March 07, 2006 at 4:51:18 PM CST

As the story goes, many, many moons ago, on december 31, 1899, a company known as American Telephone & Telegraph (that's AT&T to you and me) became the parent company of the Bell System, having received it as asset of the American Bell Company.  This was the beginning of good, old Ma Bell.  Well, over the years, AT&T grew larger and larger and larger as telecommunications needs grew.  In 1984, AT&T was forced to divest itself of local telephone communications, creating what became known as the Baby Bells.  It was a breakup of what the government considered to be a monopoly.  Like Microsoft a few years ago, AT&T had come under scrutiny (and, ironically, IBM was under similar scrutiny at the same time).

There's a lot more to the story, including the fates of Bell Labs, Western Electric, and so forth.  If you want a more in-depth reading on all that was Bell, I recommend a visit to the Bell System Memorial.  What I'm focused on is the recent ironies.  You see, here in Illinois, we had a Baby Bell known as Illinois Bell.  The break up of the national monopoly of AT&T really only resulted in local monopolies, because really, you didn't have much choice in phone company (though, here in Illinois, it depended a lot on your area whether you were part of GTE or Illinois Bell — GTE is now a part of Verizon).

Illinois Bell, Indiana Bell, Michigan Bell, Ohio Bell, and Wisconsin Bell were all part of Ameritech, one of the seven Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC) created from the AT&T divesture.  After nine years of operating as an "umbrella company," Ameritech, having started the transition by refering to the individual Bells as "an Ameritech company," finally retired the Bell names, and became Ameritech.  In 1998, Ameritech merged with SBC Communications.

Now, SBC, aka Southwestern Bell Corporation, was another of the RBOCs created during the breakup.  When SBC and Ameritech merged into SBC, several eyebrows were raised.  After all, weren't these companies all recently broken up?

Let's take a break from the Bells though, and discuss a company known as Cingular.  Cingular was a joint venture of SBC and BellSouth (yet another of the Baby Bells), which, among other things, included the merging of Cellular One, Ameritech Cellular, and SBC Wireless into one company.

Meanwhile, AT&T had gone off and done other things such as long distance, information technologies, technologcial research and the like.  I still remember some of AT&T's techie commercials.  "Have you ever payed a toll without stopping?  You will, and the company that will bring it to you?  AT&T."  Or, "Have you ever opened your door with the sound of your voice..."  Or, "Have you ever read a library book in Europe from your classroom in Texas..."  Okay, so maybe those aren't the exact taglines, but certain, "You will, and the company that will bring it to you?  AT&T," was a long running campaign.  That division of AT&T eventually broke free and became known as Lucent Technologies.

Well, not too long ago, Cingular acquired AT&T Wireless.  You might remember the old AT&T Wireless commercials, featuring people with bars over their heads.  Cingular, after the acquisition, began running commercials indicating, "The new Cingular... raising the bar."

Now, let's look at the scorecard for a moment:  SBC merges with Ameritech and remains SBC.  Cingular is mostly owned by SBC (particularly after the acquisition of Ameritech).  Cingular then buys AT&T Wireless.  Are we all caught up here?

Now, a few months ago, SBC bought AT&T, and are now in the process of retiring the SBC name in favor of AT&T.  Did you catch that?  Cingular, owned by SBC, bought AT&T Wireless, and then SBC bought AT&T.  Now, in the news, is the proposed merger of AT&T and BellSouth.  Do we all remember who owns the rest of Cingular?  Yes, you guess it.  BellSouth.

At the end of the day, I just have to sit and scratch my head in a bit of confusion.  I suppose this is how American companies work.  And it's still not nearly as confusing as which banking company has merged with the other one, creating new names, new identities, and causing passbook issues out the wazzoo, but still, it's sort of a complex thing that your average American probably doesn't even notice.

But me, I sort of have to sit here and think, "Hmmm... What was the purpose of breaking AT&T up 22 years ago?"  I particularly am amused that Cingular bought AT&T Wireless, and, while still being called Cingular at present, will now be a part of the larger AT&T corporation again.

Strange, huh?