some facts here. Cingular wireless and ATW (AT&T wireless) merged. ATW was a spin off of AT&T [ happened somewhere in 2003 I believe]. Cingular wireless was jointly owned by SBC and Bellsouth. Meaning now acquisition of BELLSOUTH by SBC brings the OWNERSHIP to SBC. SBC ADOPTED ITSELF TO AT&T. when AT&T (ma bell) was broken into 7 pieces (baby bells) it was a behemoth phone company with hands in long distance as well as local services. one company in all services throughout 50 states; coz of it monopolistic nature broken down. PRESENT AT&T (NOW), is also in PHONE BUSINESS. It controls almost 50% of fortune 1000 clients. It controls almost 60% of US local phone business. Cingular and AT&T wireless combined has largest subscribers { which is dwindling of course. I can predict VERIZON being #1 once again} there is no difference between OLD AT&T and NEW. same old shit different LABEL. Now if you want to know about the divestiture of AT&T of its ATW { at&T wireless}, cable service was sold to comcast. Lucent, agere are spin off but they were the R&D and manufacturing division. etc etc. QUEST could be AT&T target but not easy. AT&T now has 340,000 employees. very hard to integrate this kind of merger. Takes time. I think next announcement would be VERIZON buys its INTERESTS from VODAFONE. ===================================================== as always what do i know (O: