The End of AT&T Era

Today California approves the acquisition of SBC(SBC) on AT&T(T), the former giga pound telecom elephant who saw its stock and business going south on servere competition from the rivalries which includes the spinn-off or the so called baby-bells such as SBC.

The elephant can't dance
It's really sad to see such famous elephant just couldn't dance like Louis Gerstner and his IBM(IBM)which went through a major turn-around("Who Says Elephants Can't Dance" - buy from Half.com) from a dead old hardware maker to a global-consultant and outsourcing mega house. Although former AT&T CEO Mike Armstrong tried to bring AT&T into the new era by buying broadband company, yet the strategic move never proved to be successful.

Greatest Scientific Lab
As a former developer from on of AT&T's Research & Developement center in New Jersey, I was overwhelmed with the rich talents that AT&T has in its R&D centers scattered around in New Jersey. Bell Lab, as most people call the R&D center of AT&T, was used to be called the the greatest scientific laboratory that ever existed with investions which changed the world such as transistor, laser, optical communication, cell phone, touch-tone phone, and for the developers - UNIX system and C programming language. Unfortunately AT&T's core long-distance service is getting less profit and with the emerging of telecom companies such as MCI (MCIP), SBC and Verizon(VZ) which takes the profits of local telephone, there's no way to keep its tens of thousands of talented employees.

Telecom industry
After the SBC AT&T acquisition, the telecom industry will be left with only two major player as Verizon also merges MCI. The industry is in a bump ride ahead as new technology such as Voice Over IP has taken away revenues in both local and long distance. 10 years from now it will be interesting to see who'll still survive in the telecom industry or if the company will transform to a entirely new business model just like IBM.