Sorry, but it needs done. Worked for Bell and can work for Google.
From Wiki…
The breakup led to a surge of competition in the long distance telecommunications market by companies such as Sprint and MCI.[5] AT&T’s gambit in exchange for its divestiture, AT&T Computer Systems, failed, and after spinning off its manufacturing operations (most notably Western Electric, which became Lucent, then Alcatel-Lucent, now Nokia) and other misguided acquisitions such as NCR and AT&T Broadband, it was left with only its core business with roots as AT&T Long Lines and its successor AT&T Communications. It was at this point that AT&T was purchased by one of its own spin-offs, SBC Communications, the company that had also purchased two other RBOCs and a former AT&T associated operating company (Ameritech, Pacific Telesis, and SNET), and which later purchased another RBOC (BellSouth).
One consequence of the breakup was that local residential service rates, which were formerly subsidized by long distance revenues, began to rise faster than the rate of inflation. Long-distance rates, meanwhile, fell both due to the end of this subsidy and increased competition.[5] The FCC established a system of access charges where long distance networks paid the more expensive local networks both to originate and terminate a call. In this way, the implicit subsidies of the Bell System became explicit post-divestiture. These access charges became a source of strong controversy as one company after another sought to arbitrage the network and avoid these fees. In 2002 the FCC declared that Internet service providers would be treated as if they were local and would not have to pay these access charges. This led to VoIP service providers arguing that they did not have to pay access charges, resulting in significant savings for VoIP calls. The FCC was split on this issue for some time; VoIP services that utilized IP but in every other way looked like a normal phone call generally had to pay access charges, while VoIP services that looked more like applications on the Internet and did not interconnect with the public telephone network did not have to pay access charges. However, an FCC order issued in December 2011 declared that all VoIP services would have to pay the charges for nine years, at which point all access charges would then be phased out.[6]
Another consequence of the divestiture was in how both national broadcast television ( i.e. , ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS) and radio networks (NPR, Mutual, ABC Radio) distributed their programming to their local affiliated stations. Prior to the breakup, the broadcast networks relied on AT&T Long Lines’ infrastructure of terrestrial microwave relay, coaxial cable, and, for radio, broadcast-quality leased line networks to deliver their programming to local stations. However, by the mid-1970s, the then-new technology of satellite distribution offered by other companies like RCA Astro Electronics and Western Union with their respective Satcom 1 and Westar 1 satellites started to give the Bell System competition in the broadcast distribution field, with the satellites providing higher video & audio quality, as well as much lower transmission costs.[5]
However, the networks stayed with AT&T (along with simulcasting their feeds via satellite through the late 1970s to the early 1980s) due to some stations not being equipped yet with ground station receiving equipment to receive the networks’ satellite feeds, and due to the broadcast networks’ contractual obligations with AT&T up until the breakup in 1984, when the networks immediately switched to satellite exclusively. This was due to several reasons — the much cheaper rates for transmission offered by satellite operators that were not influenced by the high tariffs set by AT&T for broadcast customers, the split of the Bell System into separate RBOCs, and the end of contracts that the broadcast companies had with AT&T.[5]
AT&T’s post-breakup strategy did not work out the way it had planned. Its attempt to enter the computer business failed, and it quickly realized that Western Electric was not profitable without the guaranteed customers the Bell System had provided.[7] In 1995, AT&T spun off its computer division and Western Electric, exactly as the government had initially asked it to do. It then re-entered the local telephone business that it had exited after the breakup, which had become much more lucrative with the rise of dial-up Internet access in the early 1990s.[7] Even this, however, would not save AT&T Corporation. It would soon be absorbed by one of the Baby Bells, SBC Communications (formerly Southwestern Bell), which then co-opted the AT&T name to form the present-day AT&T Inc.
