AT&T (formerly an abbreviation for American Telephone and Telegraph) Corporation is an American telecommunications company. AT&T provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agencies. When you took its yearn history, AT&T has at times been the world's largest telephone company, the world's largest cable television operator, and a regulated monopoly. At its peak, it listed a single million humans & its revenue was about $300 billion annually within now's dollars. Around early 2005, SBC Communications (commonly known as one of a "Baby Bells" that was split-off from either AT&T itself) began the legal process to purchase its once parent AT&T.

History
A formation of the Bell Telephone Company superceded an agreement between Alexander Graham Bell and his financiers, chief among the two Gardiner G. Hubbard & Thomas Sanders. Renamed a National Bell Telephone Company within March 1877, it became the Our contries Bell Telephone Company within March 1880. By 1881, it had bought the controlling interest in the Western Electric Company from Western Union. Lone tercet years sooner, American Union experienced turned down Gardiner Hubbard's offer to sell it okay to the telephone for $100,000.

Around 1880, the management of Western Bell, created what would get AT&T Long Lines. the task was a foremost of its variety to produce countrywide long-few feet away network by owning a commercially viable prices-structure. This task was formly incorporated into the separate company christened Our contries Telephone & Telegraph Corporatiin on March 3, 1885. Starting from either New York the network reached Chicago, Illinois in 1892.

Bell's patent on the telephone expired in 1894, but a company's tremendously big client base manufactured its service tremendously other worthful than choice & real incubation continued.

In December 30, 1899, a Our contries Telephone & Telegraph Corporation bought a plus of Western Bell--this was because Massachusetts corporate laws were super restrictive & limited capitalization to ten million dollars, forestalling the incubation of Our contries Bell itself.

National trunk call service reached San Francisco in 1915. Transatlantic services began around 1927 using two-way radio, but a 1st transatlantic telephone cable did not arrive until 1956, with TAT-1.

National monopoly : 1913-1982
Around 1907, AT&T president Theodore Vail proposed that a formal monopoly would be more efficient. A federal government accepted this principle, ab initio in the Kingsbury Commitment of 1913.

For virtually all of the 20th century, AT&T subsidiary AT&T Long Lines thus enjoyed a near-total monopoly on long distance telephone service in the United States. AT&T also controlled 22 Bell Operating Companies which provided local telephone service to most of the United States. When there were numerous "independent telephone companies", General Telephone being the virtually all important, the Bell Patterns was far big than all the others, & widely considered a monopoly itself.

When you took a early 1920s, AT&T bought Lee De Forest's patents on the "audion", the first triode vacuum tube, which let them enter the radio business. Thanks to the pressures of World War I, AT&T and RCA owned all useful patents on vacuum tubes. RCthe staked a position inside wireless communication; AT&T pursued the use of tubes in telephone amplifiers. Occasionally patent allies and partners around RCA were angered while them corporations' locate in tubes began to overlap; there were several patent disputes.

AT&T, RCA, and their patent allies and partners finally settled their disputes in 1926 by compromise. AT&T decided to focus on the telephone business as a communications common carrier, and sold its broadcasting subsidiary Broadcasting Corporation of America to RCA. A plus involved station WEAF, which for some instance experienced broadcast from either AT&T headquarters in New York City. Reciprocally, RCthe signed a service agreement by using AT&T, ensuring any radio network RCA started would have transmission connections provided by AT&T. Each corporations agreed to cross-license patents, ending that aspect of the dispute. RCA, GE, and Westinghouse were now loose to combine their plus to form a National Broadcasting Company, or NBC network.

Around 1925, AT&T created a new unit called Bell Telephone Laboratories, commonly known as Bell Labs. This research and development unit proved highly successful, pioneering, among more items, radio astronomy, the transistor, the photovoltaic cell, the Unix operating system, and a C programming language. Even so, its parent company did nin universally capitalize on these accomplishment. Inside 1949 a Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit aimed at forcing the divestiture of American Electric, which was settled septenary years late by AT&T's agreement to confine its products and services to common carrier telecommunications and license its patents to "all interested parties". The key result of this was to ban AT&T from selling computers despite its key role in electronics research and development.

Public utility commissions in all state & local jurisdictions regulated the Bell Formulas & all the more telco. A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulated all service through state boundary. These commissions controlled a rates that corporations can charge, & a specific services & devices it can offer. Even so, technical innovation continued. For instance, AT&T commissioned the first experimental communications satellite, Telstar I in 1962.

The Erosion of Natural Monopoly
For several years, AT&T had been permitted to retain its monopoly status under the assumption that it was a natural monopoly. a rise of inexpensive microwave communication system in the Seventies opened a window of chance for competitors--there are no yearn was the acquisition of expensive perfect-of-ways necessary for the construction of an extended-few feet away telephone network. Within weak of this, a FCC permitted MCI (Microwave Communications, Inc) to sell communication services to large-businesses. Ironically, this technical indicator-economic argument against a necessity of AT&T's monopoly position would hold for a mere fifteen years until the beginning of the fiber-optics revolution sounded the end of microwave-based long distance.

Break up, spinoffs and restructuring
the rest of the telephone monopoly lasted until final award of a 1974 United States Department of Justice antitrust suit against AT&T on January 8, 1982, under which AT&T ("Ma Bell") agreed to divest its local exchange service operating companies, in return for a chance to go into the computer business (see AT&T Computer Systems). Although a Department of Defense did not desire AT&T to be broken, effective January 1, 1984, AT&T's local operations were split into seven independent Regional Bell Operating Companies known as "Baby Bells". AT&T, reduced in value by about 70%, continued to run all its long distance services, although it lost some market share in the ensuing years to competitors MCI and Sprint Corporation.

When its have attempt to penetrate a computer marketplace failed, around 1991, AT&T absorbed NCR Corporation (National Cash Register), hoping to capitalize on the burgeoning personal computer and UNIX networked server markets, but was unable to extract lasting financial or technological gains from the merger. When deregulation of the U.S. telecommunication industry via a Telecommunications Act of 1996, NCR was divested again. At a equivalent period, AT&T's equipment manufacturing operations and the renowned Bell Laboratories were spun off into Lucent Technologies. A industry as a whole experienced several more reorganizations since a 1990s, both due to deregulation & because of technological advances reducing require and pricing power within telecommunications.

Within 1997, AT&T hired former IBM executive Michael Armstrong as its chief executive officer. Armstrong's vision was to vary AT&T from a long-distance carrier into a global "telecommunications supermarket", eyeing Internet services for the booming dot-com industry.

Armstrong's virtually all large strategy was buying important cable television assets. When getting John Malone's TCI and Media One (gaining through the latter a 25% part of Time Warner Cable), AT&T was the largest provider of cable television in the United States. It arranged to utilize these plus to bridge a and so-alleged "last mile" and break the Regional Bell Corporations' access-monopoly of a consumer house for information & telephone services, however a wager was costly, substantially increasing the company's debt.

Around 1998, AT&T announced a US$1 billion alliance with BT to offer global voice over IP (VoIP) services, sparking rumors of a potential merger ([http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9807/26/bt.att/]). However a parties fought for control of the design & may not possibly agree on the alliance's title. By mid-2001, customers were existence directed to sign contracts using a parent corporations, & Concert, when a venture was sooner or later known, was scrapped around October that year.

Within 1999 AT&T acquired the Olivetti & Oracle Research Lab, from Olivetti and Oracle Corporation. Within 2002 it closed down the locate section of the research laboratory.

By having long-few feet away rates falling & a market for telecommunications services overall weakening, AT&T could not sustain the debt it had incurred in these ventures. Furthermore, a numbers of upgrading TCI's devices to manage both-way communications proved far higher than pre-merger estimates. AT&T undertook a major reorganization in October 2000, moving its mobile phone and broadband units into separate companies, to allow each unit to raise capital independently.

In July 9, 2001 it spun off AT&T Wireless Corp. in what was then the world's largest initial public offering (IPO). Late that month it spun polish off AT&T Broadband and Liberty Media, which comprised its cable TV assets. AT&T Broadband was subsequently acquired by Comcast Communications Corporation in 2002, and AT&T Wireless merged with Cingular Wireless in 2004.

Within 2004, the U.S. government eliminated equal access regulations that allowed long-few feet away telephone company to access a networks owned per regional Bell carriers at sensible rates. This at long last driven AT&T to move away from the residential telephone business--declaring in the process that it would no longer market residential telephone service. Instead, its residential focus shifted to offering the voice service across the broadband Internet connection out in&T CallVantage.

In January 31, 2005, SBC Communications announced that it would buy AT&T for more than $16 billion. AT&T stockholders, meeting in Denver, approved the merger on June 30, 2005. A merger is potential to exist as completed inside 2006, barring any regulative difficulties. A title of a integrated company has non been decided, however these are potential that SBC might adopt the AT&T name in some form.

Current organization
When of September 2005, AT&T's directors include by CEO and Board Chairman David Dorman, President and COO William Hannigan, Vice Chairman and CFO Thomas Horton, and CTO and CIO Hossein Eslambolchi, and John Polumbo, president & CEO of AT&T Consumer.

Divisions
The section of AT&T, the Lucky Dog Phone Company provides a pay-as-you-go long distance phone service for in-state, state-to-state, and international calls with charges added to the caller's regular monthly phone bill. Under a title 10-10-345, Lucky Mutt sponsored a #45 Winston Cup car driven by Rich Bickle in 1999.

Nicknames
AT&T was also known as "Ma Bell" and affectionately called "Mother" by phone phreaks. Spinoffs prefer a Regional Bell Operating Companies or RBOCs were often known as "Baby Bells".

A AT&T Globe Symbol, the corporate logo designed by Saul Bass in 1983, has been nicknamed the Death Star in reference to Star Wars. This title was too given to the titanic previous Bell Labs facility inside Holmdel, New Jersey, now owned by Lucent.

AT&T Competitors
Sprint Corporation MCI SBC Communications BellSouth Verizon Qwest Equant