AT&T

One of the largest providers of landline telephones, mobile phone service, Internet, and cable in the United States. It traces its origins to the Bell Telephone Company, established by Alexander Graham Bell in 1875. By the second decade of the 20th century, it was approaching near monopoly status over the telephone industry. In 1913, it agreed to acquire no more competitors without the approval of the Interstate Commerce Commission. In 1982, it was ruled that AT&T was engaging in anti-competitive activities, and the company was forced to divest itself of many of its assets. In 2005, the company was acquired by one of its former subsidiaries, which took the name AT&T. It presently controls much of what it originally did before the monopoly settlement. See also: Baby Bell.

References in periodicals archive

Dreyfuss's designs for the Bell System, realized in collaboration with the Labs and Western Electric, remain a foundation of today's human/electronic interfaces.

Mother of invention: The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

While Fanuc Robotics (Rochester Hills, MI) certainly has one of the industry-leading seven-axis painting robots with its P-200E, and while it is a supplier of both robots and applicators to suppliers of bell systems, according to Martin D.

Flexible finishing made simple(r). (Equipment & Applications)

Countering that reality, Green maintains, Bell System managers constructed an idealized image of operators as perfect "ladies" who could placate customers.

Race on the Line: Gender, Labor, and Technology in the Bell System, 1880-1980. (Reviews/Comptes Rendus)

BELL SYSTEM'S FINANCIAL DECLINE SINCE 1996 millions of Dollars 1996 2001 Sales $98,434.4 $209,473.0 Net Income $12,304.4 (-$380) EPS $7.4 $0.0 Long-term debt $27,573.5 $138,528.0 Short-term debt $1,883.2 $36,545.0 Fig.

The telecoms mess: forget Alan Greenspan. Whether U.S. profit growth resumes depends upon one thing: cleaning up the telecom sector

Before the AT&T divestiture in January 1984, employees who transferred from one Bell System company to another carried with them their credited service and any accrued benefits.

Portability of pension benefits among jobs

Elsewhere in the Bell System, however, the mood was somber; Bell people out in the field were shaken and worried about the future.

US West: the architecture of corporate transformation

Meyer provides the history of the telephone from Alexander Graham Bell in 1875 to the dissolution of AT&T's Bell System in 1984, as well as observations about development and components, those used for commercial services, electrical circuits, and restoration and repair.

Old-time telephones!; design, history, and restoration

Economies of scale, scope and system may have set limits on organization, but both the highly centralized, privately controlled Bell System and the decentralized, regionally based monopolies of Finland and Denmark produced high levels of telephone diffusion during the "analog era," that is from 1876 until World War II.

Telecommunications and Politics: The Decentralized Alternative

Prior to divestiture in 1984, the Bell System had a virtual monopoly in almost all aspects of telecommunications in the United States--local telephone service, long-distance service and equipment manufacturing.

No time for deja vu: preserving competition in long-distance service

To understand the European telecom manager's past problems, imagine the United States without the Bell system and without postdivestiture AT&T, MCI or Sprint.

Is the EC telecom market catching up?

"For research and development to yield effective results for Bell System, it has to be done by ...

R&D as investment in learning