AT&T

Largest US telecommunications company. Also known as ‘Ma Bell’, it was founded in 1877 by the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, as the Bell Telephone Company. It took the name American Telephone and Telegraph in 1899, becoming AT&T from 1994.

After a landmark antitrust case in the 1980s, the company was broken up, leaving AT&T to provide a long-distance service while seven regional companies (informally known as ‘baby bells’) provided local services. In 2005 a former ‘baby bell’, SBC Communications Inc, acquired AT&T. In 2006 the new company, retaining the AT&T name, purchased another original Bell company, BellSouth Corporation, in the largest telecommunications takeover in US history (valued at $86 billion.

In 2000, AT&T announced that it would divide into four, creating separate companies for consumers, businesses, cable television, and wireless systems. Major parts of the business were then sold off. AT&T Wireless became an independent company in 2001 and AT&T Broadband was sold to Comcast Corporation in 2002. In 2004, the company said it would focus on its business services. Following the mergers with SBC and BellSouth, AT&T was providing services to nearly 70 million local customers in 22 states.