AT&T To Pay $67 Billion for BellSouth

Twenty-two years after Judge Greene broke up AT&T, BellSouth was the only Baby Bell left as originally conceived. Now the new AT&T will buy BellSouth for $67 billion.
This isn’t a huge surprise since the two companies already own most of Cingular. As always, it all comes down to wireless.

The acquisition would also give AT&T sole control of Cingular Wireless, the nation’s biggest wireless operator with more than 54 million customers. Wireless is the fastest-growing part of the communications business and critical to the success of U.S. phone companies. AT&T owns 60%, with BellSouth controlling the rest.

The new AT&T was formed last year when SBC bought the old AT&T and took its name. AT&T will once again be one of the largest companies in the world.

The combined company would serve 70 million local-phone customers and 10 million high-speed DSL Internet users. It would also have about 315,000 employees — though that number would surely fall after the merger — and combined revenue of $121 billion, based on Wall Street’s estimate of annual 2006 sales.

Posted by on March 6th, 2006 at 9:02 am


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