Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

Southwestern Bell Telephone Company

I hired into a five state company, SWBT ran by Ed Whitaker long ago. It was a great company that was ran more like a utility company, putting customer service and quality at the forefront. As we merged with and or purchased PAC Bell, Ameritech, Bell South, SNET, AT&T it seems we took on more debt, c-appy network, bad labor agreements and no leadership. Now we only care about stock price and the bottom line, this corporation is unrecognizable to me. The Time Warner and DirecTV acquisitions following our failed merger with T-Mobile have pushed us to the brink of destruction.

Maintaining our facilities including infrastructure and even our buildings is expense so that’s out, employees are a liability so they need to go and again the only thing that matters is our stock price.

My apologies to all of you that worked for the companies SWBT has purchased and or merged with but this is a complete disaster.

AT&T is now this monster of a corporation ran by egotistical narcissist gobbling up more and more as we just go further in debt trying to buy success and innovation. Leadership is more concerned with their next webinar instead of taking care of our facilities, customers or employees.

This won’t end well for any of us.

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| 1759 views | | 8 replies (last September 10, 2019) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+10XXCTx7

8 replies (most recent on top)

They bought legacy AT&T for that HUGE overbuild of long-distance fiber.

Legacy AT&T competed more-or-less honestly with Worldcom, which was totally cooking its books and pretending to build up.

AT&T scrambled to "keep up" (thinking the whole need to be real) and gutted itself in the process, selling off pieces and parts to build out capacity that was nearly worthless for a while after Worldcom went bust and the combined overbuild sat mostly dark, waiting for demand to catch up.

By the time SBC came calling, demand was starting to be realized, but AT&T had shot its wad, and was in no shape to resist the takeover, which SBC called a "merger."

Once SBC had the "merger" in the works, it became clear that the AT&T brand was much better known than SBC's, so Dallas went through the process of figuring out how to change the name of the whole company yet again, then completed the takeover.

Stephenson didn't learn his management style from legacy AT&T. That's pure Dallas.

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Post ID: @1chi+10XXCTx7

They did not buy Legacy AT&T and acquire their leadership style. They bought them for the name brand that was recognized globally, unlike SBC or Southwestern Bell. SBC imposed their will on AT&T, the same way they did when they acquired Ameritech, BellSouth, and Pac Bell. Everything that is going on with this company now has happened under the watch of the SBC goons in Texas.

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Post ID: @bdj+10XXCTx7

I don't get the idea that Whitacre was some kind of great guy - he's the one who set thing on the current course with trying to put the bells back together & putting Randy in charge of it all.

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Post ID: @zxd+10XXCTx7

@10XXCTx7-kjz didn't help much when the ICC called SBC on the carpet for poor service, did it? Ahhhh, what do you want us to say? We're sorry. Oops! Yeah, the fines were for poor management after the merger with Ameritech.. Do you work for CNN too?

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Post ID: @yct+10XXCTx7

SWBT didn't ruin anything. It was buying AT&T and putting their leadership style at the head that's ruined this company. As for the Ameritech merger, lol they would have been better off with Verizon???? ROFLMAO! Ed said he felt like he bought a car without looking under the hood first. Ameritech was a sinkhole or failures, hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in FCC fines a month because Ameritech was months behind in installs and paying penalties. Doesn't matter today anyway, it's all a cesspool and unrecognizable.

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Post ID: @kjz+10XXCTx7

Southwestern Bell ruined everything for all of us.

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Post ID: @vjl+10XXCTx7

This is what happens when you take a utility and move it into a for profit business. Randall believes they can still make money on shareholder value alone. No product needed to stay in the game. Look at their streaming product. Most come in under $50 a month and T hits with $135. All I can say is Randall has good d–gs...

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Post ID: @tbm+10XXCTx7

BINGO!

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Post ID: @psy+10XXCTx7

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