Word: breakups
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...moment the clearest thing about the breakup of AT&T is the confusion. As recently as last week, it was unclear, for instance, whether local phone companies had the right to offer phone services like weather and time of day after Jan, 1. The gigantic physical task of divvying the Bell System's assets among the new parts, from whole telephone exchanges down to trucks, repair equipment, paper clips and brooms, is still going on. Though phone service has not been hampered, companies trying to do business with Bell report that they sometimes have trouble finding...
Much of the American public seems bewildered about the breakup. Polls show that only one in five people knows what is about to happen to their phone system. Says Cecil Woods, 33, a Chicago maintenance worker: "I think it's supposed to be a good thing for everybody, but I don't quite understand how. I just hope something good comes of it, and I think it will...
...breakup of AT&T has so many possible ramifications that few people even pretend to understand it thoroughly. Wall Street firms have held dozens of investor seminars on the divestiture, all run by veteran staffers bristling with law degrees and M.B.A.s. But at one session last month, "I don't know" was a tellingly frequent response from, among others, panelist Alfred Kahn, chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board under Jimmy Carter. An expert on the telephone industry, Kahn presided over the deregulation of U.S. airlines in the late 1970s and is now a professor of political economy at Cornell...
Greene did not immediately accept their deal. Meticulously, he read 8,000 pages of comments and interviewed 600 witnesses. Among those who spoke out in opposition to the breakup was Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who said that dealing with an array of companies could threaten national defense and drive up communications costs. Greene also reviewed 25,000 pages of trial transcripts. Many months passed, with Greene raising objections along the way, continually shaping and modifying the parts that were now to be independent. In August 1983, Greene gave final approval to the divestiture agreement...
Whether the company was guilty of antitrust-law violations has never been proved, although some suits by competitors have yet to be resolved. Some Wall Streeters think AT&T gave in too easily and in fact could have struck some sort of compromise short of total breakup. But all that is now academic. As AT&T Chairman Charles Brown says of divestiture: "The ship has left the dock...