What's your view of AT&T?

[Genecks]

I keep seeing AT&T in the media and some buildings. Last I remember, they tried creating a monopoly in the 1990s. What do you think its current agenda is?

[iNow]

Dominate every market in which they have customers and maximize profits for their shareholders. Simple really. Did you have a harder question, as I'm pretty sure this is not the response for which you were priming the reader.

[ParanoiA]

I keep seeing AT&T in the media and some buildings. Last I remember, they tried creating a monopoly in the 1990s. What do you think its current agenda is?

 

AT&T just got bought out by SBC - an absolutely huge company. SBC chose to use the at&t name, so basically at&t grew about 20 fold overnight.

 

They didn't try creating a monopoly in the 90's. I have no idea what you're referencing there, AT&T was divested in 1984. That created 5 Bell regions for local phone service, while AT&T was solely long distance, or more accurately, inter-LATA connectivity.

 

Slowly, the regions are being absorbed right back where they started from. Already, PacBell, Southwestern Bell, Ameritech and Bell South are back under the at&t title. I don't believe anything will stop them at this point.

 

Agenda? To maximize profits for shareholders by ruling the planet...

[Pangloss]

AT&T never actually disappeared. They were a long distance company after the breakup, and more recently a cellular provider after they bought out BellSouth's wireless service a couple of years ago. AT&T acquired the rest of BellSouth a few months ago.

 

Ironically, the stated reason for the resurgence of AT&T is "competition". The feeling amongst lawmakers has been that this would be a viable means to provide consumers with alternatives to the growing entertainment megacorps that were starting to provide last-mile service via the cable companies and more recently through wireless services.

 

My view is that the result has been a somewhat mixed bag. Prices continue to rise, but services rise as well. I have electricity, wireless phone service, regular telephone service, high-speed internet service, satellite television service, and HDTV service (yeah, they're separate for me). A couple of decades ago it was just power, telephone and TV, so it's hard to argue with that part of the equation. And given the sheer amount of service available (number of channels, speed of internet access, on-demand movies, etc), the price doesn't really seem to outrageous in the overall scheme of things. It certainly isn't a cause for budgetary concern for the average household (which is happy to order it, after all).

 

Of more concern is the rising difficulty of achieving high service quality, contacting support representatives, and resolving billing disputes. These issues have been trending downward rather than upward, and decades of "public service" (i.e. local government) oversight to varying degrees doesn't seem to have resolved anything except for adding additional charges for mandatory this and regulatory that.

[ParanoiA]

Of more concern is the rising difficulty of achieving high service quality, contacting support representatives, and resolving billing disputes.

 

No kidding. Customer service is taking a nose dive and all of the telecomm companies seem to know this and appear to cooperatively keep it that way. As long as none of them make the leap to great customer care, they can all just equally suck at it and focus their attention on prices and availability.

 

The call tree is the first and worst offender of horrible customer service. Second, only by mere inches, is the outsourcing to India that SBC, now at&t has invested in. Even the intra-company support groups and desktop services are based in India and they are horrible to work with - no special support for the AT&T workforce.

 

I'm convinced this type of outsourced and IVR customer service is just to satisfy a "minimum requirement" and is designed NOT to be used. I believe they like it being a hassle so you won't want to call and use it. It works too. I've got problems with my DSL line but I'd rather drill screws through my toes than call them.

 

And thus the irony...they then brag about the network reliability due to the lack of customer service volume. Brilliant huh?

 

These issues have been trending downward rather than upward, and decades of "public service" (i.e. local government) oversight to varying degrees doesn't seem to have resolved anything except for adding additional charges for mandatory this and regulatory that.

 

Don't forget that CLEC's steer clear of much of this regulation. This has been the insult SBC/AT&T has had to deal with over the decades. AT&T is heavily regulated at the local exchange level, but CLEC's are free from the shackles of government extortion. For many years the Bell's were forced to lease facilities, that AT&T built over the course of decades, at a lower cost than mere maintenance, let alone re-selling it to their own customers under a different company name.

 

Regulation has done little more than gaurantee the existence of AT&T/SBC with the same level of crappy service you'd expect with a practical monopoly. Of course, with the advent of satellite service, VoIP and etc, we're getting some sputtering of competition. But the cable companies are in the best position, they aren't burdened by the level of regulation AT&T has to deal with yet have impressive infrastructure and facilities already in place.

[Pangloss]

Yes, and god help us all if cable companies end up without competition. That's where I agree with lawmakers, I just disagree with the way it's sold to the public -- as a good thing, instead of what it really is, which is the best option out of a very bad set of choices.

 

But to be honest about it, though my ideological tendencies lean in that direction, I'm not sure the situation would be a whole lot better without regulation of any kind. I think we'd just have a different set of problems.

[ParanoiA]

But to be honest about it, though my ideological tendencies lean in that direction, I'm not sure the situation would be a whole lot better without regulation of any kind. I think we'd just have a different set of problems.

 

Probably. I just can't agree with cherry picking regulation that empowers one company and hinders another - in the same damn market. Yes, maybe AT&T is a monopoly and needs to be regulated, but to basically hold them down while CLECs get to kick them to "catch up" is ridiculous. AT&T is a business that spent alot of money and manpower to get thousands of miles of copper in the ground - perhaps they deserve to make more money than the newbies?

 

But make no mistake, AT&T is evil...

[JohnB]

What do you think its current agenda is?

To irritate the hell out of those who don't live in the US by putting their shortcuts into as many programs as possible.