A few corrections, since from reading this note, it is clear you
did not experience the joys of divesture and its impacts.
In the first place, the old Bell System was split into 7, not 5,
Baby Bells. Two of them (SBC & PacTel) have already rejoined,
and two others (Bell Atlantic & NYNEX) are well on the way to
a merger. The Bells which were not majority owned by AT&T
were completely divested from AT&T. (SNET & Cincinnati Bell).
A few years earlier, Bell Canada was sold off.
Second: What the Justice Department asked the court for, was Not
to break up the telephone companies into a long distance and
several regional companies -- they had more sense than that, as
today's events demonstrate. The Justice Department --
demonstrating exceptional wisdom -- asked that the old Bell
System be split in two parts: The telephone company/services
part -- which was AT&T Long Lines and all of the 23 Bell
Companies, and Western Electric -- the manufacturing/R&D part.
AT&T had essentially three choices:
a) agree to spinoff Western Electric and keep all the telephone
companies
b) Spinoff all the local companies into separate RBOCs,
but keep Western Electric (and Bell Labs - and the Bell
Labs name)
c) Stonewall the government, as IBM successfully did.
What happened? In 1982, AT&T President Charlie Brown went with
choice b)
Bad choice, it turns out. 13 years later -- short by
corporate evolutionary standards -- AT&T CEO Bob Allen
went with choice a, but by then had lost the local companies
through the 1984 divestiture. No surprise he is trying to
go back to choice a)
And what about choice c)? Stonewall, like IBM did?
IBM's stonewalling had two effects: First, it brought them to
[177 lines left ... full text available at <url:http://www.reference.com/cgi-bin/pn/go.py?choice=message&table=06_1997&mid=189878&hilit=ART+SATELLITE> ]
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Article-ID: 06_1997&183441
Score: 78
Subject: FAQ Multics Bibliography