What carrier owns AT&T?
Among the main communications firms in America is AT&T Internet. To millions of its patrons scattered over the nation, it provides mobile phone, television, and internet services.
Still, the AT&T you know today has not always been such a big company. Due mostly to government interference, mergers and acquisitions, reinventions, and rivalry, its history may be classified as fairly large and turbulent. A little bit of that past helps one to understand how AT&T has evolved into the telecom behemoth it is now.
The Origins of AT&T
Late in the 1800s, the AT&T Company started as Bell Telephone Company. Alexander Graham Bell developed the telephone in 1876; he soon thereafter founded the Bell Telephone Company to further develop his new creation and provide phone services to the public.
Bell Telephone became quite much the king of the telephone business in the United States in many decades thanks to its legal rights to telecommunications patents and unique status as the exclusive carrier of long-distance calls. It gained competitors, expanded quickly throughout the country, and was the biggest participant in telecommunication.
American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) was founded in 1899 and grew to be Bell Telephone's main running partner as well as other related businesses. This marks the beginning of the modern AT&T.
From the early 20th century until the late 1980s, AT&T could hardly be considered as a competitive business as it had an almost perfect monopoly on phone services in the United States. This meant that AT&T managed the local exchanges within cities and towns throughout America as well as the long-distance phone connections. And this exclusive position was zealously guarded in court to stifle competition.
AT&T: The telephone company broken up and reshaped
In 1974 the organization of United States Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit to dismantle AT&T. Finally in 1982, after a long legal battle, AT&T finally decided to cut off its local telephone operations. In the United States, it maintained long-distance services and nearly all of Bell Labs under a new subsidiary company that continued to be called AT&T.
So for the next two decades, there were essentially two iterations of AT&T.
1. The original AT&T which was established to deal with long-distance service only
2. Seven “Baby Bell” regional companies (such as BellSouth, NYNEX, and Pacific Bell) that took over the local telephone business
At this time, both the long-distance AT&T and the Baby Bells were still regulated as common carrier telephone utilities. Meanwhile, some new entrants invaded markets that were once dominated by AT&T. These included long-distance telephone companies such as MCI and Sprint, and local telephone services that were offered through cable television companies.
Re-emergence of AT&T
The industry of telephone has once more changed throughout the 1990s and 2000s through the means of mergers and changes in regulations. AT&T bought a cellular carrier and transformed itself into a wireless services company. The Baby Bells reverted to bigger firms.
Next, in 2005, SBC Communications, which was formed from many of the original Baby Bells, bought the original AT&T and adopted the historic company’s name. This merged entity again offered local and long-distance telephony services and wireless and DSL Internet services.
Recent Years & Acquisition of Time Warner
The modern AT&T has continued to grow through major acquisitions over the past decade.
- Acquisition of BellSouth in 2006 to own Cingular Wireless
- Purchase of satellite television services provider DIRECTV in 2015
- Acquisition of media conglomerate Time Warner in 2018
It was a huge content acquisition to underpin AT&T’s wireline and wireless service. It introduced popular brands such as CN, HBO, Warner Bros, and DC into the AT&T family. This $85 billion deal made AT&T a much more diversified media and telecom platform.
But in its many transformations, AT&T has its origins in Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone patents from more than 140 years ago. The company has evolved from a series of breakups and mergers to its current state as a communications and entertainment conglomerate. Having more than 100 million wireless customers and one of the largest media companies AT&T continues to be the leader in many sectors.
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