Bell Companies that are part of AT&T, Inc. (2005-present):
*Note: AT&T Inc. is comprised of four of the original “Baby Bells” that were spun-off from the original AT&T in 1984; Ameritech, Bell South, Pacific Telesis, and Southwestern Bell (SBC). AT&T Inc., which was originally SBC, had acquired its former parent, AT&T Corp. in 2005, and, renamed itself AT&T Inc. The original AT&T officially renamed itself AT&T Corporation in 1990, and disused the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, six years after divestiture.
Ameritech is the original 1984 AT&T divestiture name and logo given as the holding company for the following Bells:
Though not a Bell Company, AT&T Corporation was purchased by one of its “Baby Bell” offspring’s in 2005; Southwestern Bell Corporation, which renamed itself SBC Communications in 1995:
-
AT&T Alascom
-
AT&T Communications
-
AT&T Laboratories (R&D relating to voice technology, software and network management)
-
AT&T Technologies (Spun-off in 1996 to become Lucent Technologies; comprised of Network Systems Group, Microelectronics Group, Consumer Products Group, Bell Laboratories.) AT&T Technologies was the new name for Western Electric, which was changed in 1983 to prepare for the divestiture.
*Note: Lucent technologies kept the portion of the original AT&T Bell Laboratories that pertained to research and development of telephone equipment, and other research dealing in networking equipment.
Also, AT&T Corp. still exists as subsidiary of AT&T Inc., and provides business telecommunications services for businesses, government, and the long distance network.
AT&T Corp. News Letters & Literature
AB-0062 Interview: Hossein Eslambolchi
AB-0154 Backgrounder: Where is Networking Taking Your **
**Business?
AB-0256 Point of View: Self-Managing Networks: Building **
**Infrastructure for Utility Computing
AB-0283 Networking Views: Keeping the Chaos at Bay
AT&T Business- Numbers Like These Are Hard to Beat
TFD99- Which one would you call first?
AT&T Business- The grass really is greener.
AT&T Business- Unlimited talk is good for small business.
Bell South is the original 1984 AT&T divestiture name and logo given as the holding company for the following Bells:
Pacific Telesis is the original 1984 AT&T divestiture name and logo given as the holding company for the following Bells:
Southwestern Bell Corporation is the original 1984 AT&T divestiture name and logo given as the holding company for the following Bells:
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Web Hosting Services, MDS and VDS Server Solutions, Mobile Website Hosting Services:AT&T offers a variety of web hosting solutions for you to choose the web hosting plan that fits your specific needs.
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changing face of AT&T (at&t)
Treasures of telephony tucked away in AT&T’s Somerset County vault
The Star-Ledger**,**July 01, 2012
Eliot Caroom /Reporter
In a nondescript warehouse in Somerset County, AT&T stores its furniture, old business records and a treasure trove of telecommunications technology.
Deep inside the warehouse is a vault. Don’t light a match in the vault, or its safety measures will suck oxygen from the narrow room in seconds to protect its valuables.
What kind of valuables?
Well, for starters, theres the notebook in which Alexander Graham Bells assistant, Thomas A. Watson, recorded the first-ever telephone conversation on March 10, 1876.
The words written in the ledger are famous, and George Kupczak, who manages AT&Ts archives in New Jersey, knows them by heart. But Kupczak still seems to vibrate with excitement as he gives them voice once again in the innermost sanctum of the archives, the fluorescent-lit vault lined with tall metal library shelves.
“Mr. Watson, come here, I want you,” Kupczak read, his white-gloved hands carefully cradling the small sheaf of papers.
“There you go,” Kupczak said, his eyes darting with a thrill. “This is the beginning.”
The notebook in which Watson recorded Bell’s words.
Besides Watsons notebook, AT&Ts warehouse in Warren Township houses a remarkable assortment of working papers and prototypes from the century of work in which company scientists earned Bell Labs the nickname “The Idea Factory” and racked up at least seven Nobel prizes.
Researchers helped develop phones, stereo audio recording, satellites, solar panels and transistors.
Sometimes the company lends items to museums: it agreed to let the new September 11 Memorial & Museum borrow a dented AT&T pay phone that fell from the 107th floor of Building 2 of the World Trade Center after the terrorist attacks. Other pieces of history were lent to the Smithsonian Institution.
Like the history of the company, phone-related technology is the heart of the archives.
A heavy wooden phone switchboard from Meriden, Conn., used in 1878, looks like a mystery to be found on “Antiques Roadshow.”
But this heirloom that illustrates the profoundly manual origins of the phone is not for sale.
It defines the word “switchboard” it is a heavy piece of wood studded with metal knobs and metal switches that turn like the hands of a clock to make contact with them.
“If a phone call came in, one of these flags would pop out and the operator would know to connect the call,” Kupczak said.
That heirloom dates to three years after Alexander Graham Bells invention of the telephone in 1876.
Bell and his partners formed a company that licensed telephone exchanges across the country and became known as the American Bell Telephone Company. Its Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, created years later, was renowned for innovation.
In the last few decades, though, the company and the labs ownership have traced a tortured path of ups and downs.
AT&T, or American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was born in 1885, and became the parent company of local parts of the Bell System. The system functioned as a legal, regulated monopoly, through a series of deals with the federal government.
Eventually, the government pushed for the system to be broken up into separate companies, and in 1982, AT&T agreed. The company was broken up into Baby Bells, subsidiaries around the country.
Bell Labs wound up run by Lucent, an AT&T offshoot, which became Alcatel-Lucent after purchase by French firm Alcatel.
AT&Ts famous “Golden Boy” statue moved from its old headquarters in New York to New Jersey, and then eventually to Dallas after AT&T was bought by former subsidiary SBC Communications.
But AT&Ts cache of valuables from the companys early origins stayed intact, in New Jersey, and is by no means limited to telephony.
Aaron Houston/For The Star-LedgerAn early AT&T ad showing
the solar panels and batteries invented in Bell Labs.
“People think AT&T and they think telephones, thats all they think about,” Kupczak said. “But AT&T was involved in all aspects of popular culture.”
The one invention that stands out from the rest is the transistor, which won the Nobel Prize for Bell Labs employees in 1947.
The transistor is a cornerstone of modern electronics. The devices are solid semiconductors that switch electronic signals, turn them on and off and amplify them. They are essential to all modern electronic devices.
Credit for the invention went to three men, Bell Labs Walter Brattain, working with William Shockley and John Bardeen, who also worked for the labs at the time.
Two of the three inventors moved on to new jobs around the country, but evidence of their genius stayed in New Jerseythe notebook entry when a working transistor design was first scrawled on paper on Christmas Eve 1947.
The proof? Brattains notebook, just one more memento stored in Kupczaks quiet vault.
http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2012/07/treasures_of_telephony_tucked.html
Name change as easy as SBC
Bell label jettisoned to unify company’s identity for consumers
By Eliot Caroom/The Star-Ledger, July 01, 2012
The Southwestern Bell brand died Tuesday. It was 82.
It will be joined in the afterlife by its sisters Pacific Bell, 122, and Ameritech, 9.
The phone companies will now simply be SBC, letters that once stood for Southwestern Bell Corp. But no longer.
San Antonio-based telecom giant SBC Communications, which owns the three companies, said it’s adopting a national brand name across its 13-state local-phone operations to unify its image. It’s following the lead of other Baby Bells such as the former Bell Atlantic, which is now Verizon Communications.
“It’s the spreading of the corporate DNA,” said A. Michael Noll, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communications.
The change will strip the historic “Bell” moniker from all but two members of the Bell family. Only BellSouth and Cincinnati Bell use the term.
The company has planned the change for three years. Phone bills were changed effective Tuesday, and many of the company’s buildings and trucks have sported the SBC name and logo for some time, said spokesman Larry Solomon.
“The heritage will remain,” Mr. Solomon said. “The legacy will remain. It’s simply a new name.”
With one exception: Fulfilling a promise to state regulators, SBC’s Connecticut operations will continue to use the name SBC SNET, which previously stood for Southern New England Telecommunications.
Mr. Solomon wouldn’t say how much the rebranding will cost. Customer awareness of the SBC name is already high, particularly in California and the Midwest, where its acquisition and integration of Pacific Bell and Ameritech have garnered significant media coverage.
The Southwestern Bell brand was adopted for AT&T’s local operations in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas in April 1920. Seven years ago, Southwestern Bell Corp. changed to SBC Communications.
The Pacific Bell name was first used in 1880 and was discontinued in 1889, when the West Coast company changed its name to Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Co. It was brought back in 1984 by Pacific Telesis, the Baby Bell that also owned Nevada Bell. In 1997, SBC bought Pacific Telesis.
In the Midwest, five separate brands Illinois Bell, Indiana Bell, Michigan Bell, Ohio Bell and Wisconsin Bell prevailed until April 1993, when parent Ameritech imposed its single brand. SBC bought Ameritech in 1999.
Even though some phone company names have been around for decades, many have gone through several rounds of changes, said Herb Hackenburg, executive director of the Telephone History Group in Denver. American Telephone & Telegraph (1885), for example, is now simply AT&T.
“There are a lot of precedents for gobbling up telephone companies,” he said. “Northwestern Bell gobbled up over 400 telephone companies, including some relatively large companies like Nebraska Bell.”
In 1984, Northwestern Bell became part of US West, which was bought by Qwest Communications International in June 2000.
Name changes over the last few years have been driven by companies’ desire to establish national and global identities. When Bell Atlantic and Irving-based GTE Corp. merged in June 2000, they chose to craft an entirely new word Verizon.
Until recently, SBC was content with letting its acquired operations retain their own identities. But it imposed the corporate image in September 2001 by forcing local brands to add the SBC prefix to their names, ala SBC Southwestern Bell.
Experts say its latest move is a logical extension as the company increasingly goes up against who else but the Bell family matriarch, AT&T.
Changing the name will make it easier for SBC to compete nationally with AT&T for business customers, said Courtney Quinn, a senior analyst with the Yankee Group, a Boston consulting firm.
The new name is also a way to tell consumers the company doesn’t sell only plain old telephone service.
“It’s a much broader promise of access and connectivity and control, to some degree, over your life,” said Julie Cottineau, managing director of naming for Interbrand, a consulting firm.
“The burden is now on the company’s to imbue this empty vessel with meaning,” Ms. Cottineau said.
What about the last keepers of the “Bell” heritage? How long will they hold out?
“It’s our position that the name Cincinnati Bell has tremendous value,” said spokeswoman Jenny Kues.
Said BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher: “The company loves the Bell name. We have absolutely no plans to change it.”
E-mail [email protected]
On October 22, 2016, AT&T announced its plans to acquire Time Warner. We expect the transaction to close by end-of-year 2017.
See more at:
http://about.att.com/newsroom/att_time_warner.html
https://investors.att.com/stockholder-services/time-warner-stockholders/at-and-t-merger
Dallas, TX and New York, NY May 17, 2021. AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) and Discovery, Inc.
(NASDAQ: DISCA, DISCB, DISCK) today announced a definitive agreement to combine
WarnerMedias premium entertainment, sports and news assets with Discovery’s leading
nonfiction and international entertainment and sports businesses to create a premier,
standalone global entertainment company.
https://investors.att.com/~/media/Files/A/ATT-IR-V2/press-release/press-release-17052021.pdf
Dallas, TX February 1, 2022. AT&T to Spin Off Interest in WarnerMedia to Shareholders
AT&T to Spin Off Interest in WarnerMedia to its Shareholders at Closing of Previously Announced Transaction with Discovery, Inc.
https://about.att.com/story/2022/spin-off-interest-in-warnermedia.html
DALLAS, TEXAS and EL SEGUNDO, CALIF. May 18, 2014 AT&T (NYSE:T) and DIRECTV (NASDAQ:DTV) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which AT&T will acquire DIRECTV in a stock-and-cash transaction for $95 per share based on AT&Ts Friday closing price. The agreement has been approved unanimously by the Boards of Directors of both companies. - See more at:
http://about.att.com/story/att_to_acquire_directv.html
https://investors.att.com/stockholder-services/cost-basis-guide/worksheet/directv
AT&T & TPG to Form New Entity to Operate AT&Ts U.S. Video Unit
https://about.att.com/story/2021/video.html
DIRECTV to Own and Operate Former AT&T Video Operations
https://about.att.com/story/2021/att_directv.html
Note: AT&T was one of the first telecoms in the U.S. to offer DirecTV back in the 1990’s. Check out our DirecTV and AT&T Corp. literature on this, which is from 1996-1997.
DirecTV: Get The Most From your TV
DirecTV: Television That’s Out of This World
AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and Deutsche Telekom AG (FWB: DTE) on 20 March 2011 announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which AT&T will acquire T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom in a cash-and-stock transaction currently valued at approximately $39 billion. The agreement has been approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies.
AT&T to Acquire T-Mobile USA From Deutsche Telekom
http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=19358&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=31703
AT&T will hang up the phone on its embattled bid to take over T-Mobile USA for $39 billion.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/12/att-pulls-out-of-t-mobile-acquisition-deal.html
Well, it looks like SBC has bought its original parent company, AT&T, and changed its name to at&t (note the lower-case initials) and has become, once again, the largest telecommunications company in the USA. The combined SBC and AT&T Corp. is officially called AT&T Inc.
The network meets the know-how.
Most mergers benefit somebody. Introducing the first to **
**benefit everybody.(01)
Most mergers benefit somebody. Introducing the first to **
**benefit everybody.(02)
Americas business network meets Americas wireless **
**network.
The leader in data meets the master of DSL.
Evolution of the SBC and AT&T Brands: A Pictorial **
**Timeline
Evolution of the New AT&T Brand
AT&T Collaborate Feature access codes
AT&T Voice DNA® feature (star) codes: Quick reference **
**guide
AT&T Traditional Landline Star Codes and Calling **
**Features
SBC chief says deal preserves an ‘icon’
Posted 1/31/2005 11:49 PM Updated 2/1/2005 2:52 AM
Click the 
link to read the full article
…“It’s the same kind of moxie that Theodore Vail had in building the Bell System,” he says, referring to Bell’s storied general manager in the early 1900s.
Clearly moved by the historic importance of the transaction, Dorman had the official portraits of Vail and Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, moved into AT&T’s boardroom for the final vote on the deal Sunday night.
“Those guys built this company,” Dorman says, recounting the moment when the final board vote was taken to sell AT&T to SBC.
“This is a historic company, one of the most enduring and widely used by mankind, in terms of the telephone. I just wanted them there.”
The decorative façade of the former Texas Theatre still
remains and fronts the AT&T headquarters building.
The AT&T campus in
Bedminster, N.J.
The new AT&T logo greets employees and guests
entering the headquarters building at 175 E. Houston St.
in San Antonio.
Employees can test AT&T’s latest technology in the
lobby area at the headquarters building.
Video screens in the lobby showcase AT&T’s rich
history of meaningful innovation.
The AT&T Midwest headquarters building in
Hoffman Estates, Ill., was recently rebranded with the new logo.
The following photos were contributed by Andy Kropidlowski, SBC Service Technician Orange/Riverside field operations in Southern California. Thanks Andy for these photos!
Andy’s existing service van photo (1993 DodgeRam 250)
SBC removed the last Pacific * Bell stickered vehicle in the fleet at Anaheim and re-branded it .
Inside of Andy’s existing service van photo (1993 DodgeRam 250)
New SBC “stickered” service tech van with ad on it
SBC construction Splicer rig with pole placer hook and giant auger drill bit
P*B Heavy duty Splicer tower truck
Vandalized pay phone Andy saw in the SBC warehouse that
SBC asset protection recovered from the local state college
campus dorms. Looks like they used a giant crowbar or pry
bar to get into the coin box.
Map of Southwestern Bell territory in 1997. Click on image to get pdf version.
The following photos were contributed by Conrad Otto, Engineering Manager from Southwestern Bell. Thank you Conrad for these photos! You can read more on Conrad on our “Bell System Employee Stories” section.
I spent most of my
career in St. Louis with a brief tour in Houston and a few years at the Bell
System Center for Technical Education in Lisle, Illinois. Attached are a few
photos of that facility, taken in 1970.
Darrell R. Powers sent this photo to me of a payphone
booth showing the Bell logo next to the Ameritech logo.
It’s Official, AT&T received approval on December 29 to acquire Bell South. Both the Cingular and Bell South name will be phased out in 2007. Click HERE to read further about the momentous event.
Unlike the other Baby Bells, BellSouth still uses the familiar Bell System color stripes on their vans.
This is the****Baby Bell I’m most familiar with . . . BellSouth - (formerly Southern Bell and South Central Bell).
In 1984, the Bell System’s local exchanges were divested from AT&T and organized into regional “Bell Operating Companies” which are sometimes called, unofficially, “Baby Bells”. BellSouth is the last of the original “Baby Bells” still operating by itself, a BellSouth spokesman said. BellSouth Corporation is an integrated communications services company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia serving more than 41 million customers in theUnited States and 16 other countries. BellSouth, consistently recognized for customer satisfaction, provides residential, business and wholesalecustomers with integrated voice, video and data services to meet theircommunications needs. BellSouth is a Fortune 100 company with total revenuesexceeding $26 billion.
The following is a brief account of corporate changes that took place in what is now called BellSouth:
1990 - 1991 - Prior to 12/31/1991, BellSouth Corporation consisted of two separate operating companies:
-
South Central Bell Telephone Company which serviced Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.
-
Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company which serviced Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
1992 - 1994 - On 1/1/1992, South Central Bell and Southern Bell were merged, forming BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc., a corporation that is wholly-owned by BellSouth Corporation.
1995 - BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. had no changes during this period, except that on 1/1/1995, the names South Central Bell and Southern Bell were dropped and only BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. was used.
1996 - 2005 - BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. had no changes during this period.
2006 - BellSouth announced on March 5, 2006 that they have reached an agreement with the “new” AT&T (formerly SBC) to merge within a year. The Cingular name will become AT&T and BellSouth will be called AT&T.
BellSouth has proudly kept the Bell name, logo and tradition! Click HERE to view PDF. (a GIF image is also available by clickingHERE.)
I wish I could say the same for the rest of the former Bell System local operating companies! Yes, you might have guessed by now that I’m a BellSouth customer. I have BellSouth for my local phone service, cell phone service (Cingular), FastAccess ADSL Internet service and long distance service. I’ve been a Southern Bell and BellSouth customer since the 1970’s so I think that makes me a loyal customer :-)
Did you know that BellSouth in the metro Atlanta area has THE LARGEST TOLL-FREE LOCAL CALLING AREA IN THE USA? No other Baby Bell or ex-Baby Bell can say that. We have to put up with three area codes and ten digit dialing though - a sharp contrast to the days when I was in college and could call long distance from Orlando, Florida to Miami, Florida (about 250 miles or 400 Kilometers) by only dialing a “1” and the seven digit number!!! Now I can’t call my neighbor across the street without dialing ten digits!
**The BellSouth building in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, USA.**I live about 25 miles north of Atlanta.
I took this picture while sitting at a red
light but some truck was blocking part of the lower section of the building.
Click on image to show full-size view.
BellSouth facility near me in Kennesaw, Georgia, **USA.**Click on image to show full-size view.
BellSouth building (formerly the South Central Bell headquarters)
**in Birmingham, Alabama, USA.**Photo courtesy of Eric Paschal.
Click on image to show full-size view.
BellSouth has carried on the tradition of the Bell System’s involvement with the community as seen in the photographs below that I took at Zoo Atlanta near where I live:
The Panda exhibit is probably the most popular exhibit at the zoo in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Here is a photo of my youngest daughter posing behind one of the many BellSouth sponsored props. I wish I kept a copy of the old phone book shown with the pandas on the front cover!
A special thank you to Durwood Hunter for sharing two photos and his story of his time with BellSouth.
“We delivered telephone supplies to work centers across North and Central Florida from the BellSouth Services Warehouse (formally Western Electric). All of the drivers were BellSouth employees from all kinds of jobs. We were trained to drive by BellSouth. We drove at night and also delivered cable on the day shift. At the time it was kept quiet that we also picked up Pay Station money on the return to Jacksonville.
The job lasted two years and returned to contract drivers. A few years later the warehouse closed and BellSouth Services was history.”
Durwood Hunter Driver BellSouth Services Jacksonville Fl. Twenty years
with Bell and this was the best job I had!
Logo for the transportation department.
$1,000 bond from Southern Bell dated 1939. (Southern Bell is now BellSouth).
