After mad public screaming and crying over its practice of limiting the unlimited, ATT changes some shit, Check it. AT&T changes things on data-limits; the company “backed away from an unpopular service policy after smartphone subscribers complained that the company placed unreasonable limits on its ‘unlimited data’ plans.” –Boston.com
Check it. AT&T Ends All-You-Can-Eat
“AT&T Inc. pulled the plug on its all-you-can-eat plan for smartphone customers, telling subscribers they will see much slower speeds if they exceed a new monthly usage cap.
The new limit, which applies to some 17 million subscribers, means users of the No. 2 U.S. carrier have little choice but to start paying more as they download more video, stream more music and use more apps.” -WSJ
ATT. is an American multinational telecommunications amalgamated amalgamation conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the second largest monopoly of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services. As of 2010, AT&T is the 7th largest company in the United States by total revenue, as well as the 4th largest non-oil company in the US (behind Walmart, General Electric, and Bank of America).
The company began its existence as Southwestern Bell Corporation, one of seven Regional Bell Operating Companies created in 1983 as part of the break-up of the original AT&T due to the United States v. AT&T antitrust lawsuit. It changed its name to SBC Communications Inc. in 1995. In 2005, it purchased its former parent company, AT&T Corporation (originally known as the American Telephone and Telegraph Company), and took on its branding, with the merged entity naming itself AT&T Inc. and using the iconic AT&T logo and stock-trading symbol.
The current AT&T reconstitutes much of the former Bell System and includes ten of the original 22 Bell Operating Companies, along with one it partially owned (Southern New England Telephone).
Remember when there was more than 3 phone companies and there was competition? Me neither, even though the interwebs do. The current skull fucking jars the brain.
Of interest:
United States v. AT&T was the antitrust case in the United States that led to the 1984 Bell System divestiture, the breakup of the old American Telephone & Telegraph into new, seven regional Bell operating companies (RBOC)s and the much smaller new AT&T.
In the 1970s, the Federal Communications Commission suspected that the American Telephone & Telegraph Company was using monopoly profits from its Western Electric subsidiary to subsidize the costs of its network, which was contrary to U.S. antitrust law. The case was filed by the United States Department of Justice in 1974.
In 1978, Judge Harold H. Greene of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, on his first day on the bench, took over the case. It was settled in 1982 by the means of a consent decree between AT&T and the Department of Justice, called the Modification of Final Judgment as agreed by AT&T Chairman Charles L. Brown.