Something About This Rings a Bell…
To summarize the events of the last year or so:
- Southwestern Bell buys AT&T.
- Southwestern Bell renames itself as “AT&T”. The all-seeing eye lives once more.
- AT&T announces it will be raising Oklahoma local rates for the first time in 20 years.
- AT&T buys BellSouth, the dominant phone provider for the southeast USA.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m all for corporate success and the “trickle-down” theory. But didn’t we recently (about 20 years ago) go through a heck of lot of trouble to break up the Bell system? Yet here we are, watching Ma Bell slowly reassemble herself like a zombie from one of George Romero’s movies.
Something made me think of the word bellicose in relation to all of this. I wasn’t sure why the word came to mind, other than the “bell” resemblance, so I looked it up. “Warlike in nature; aggressive; hostile. Showing or having the impulse to be combative.” Yep, it figures.
You can call me paranoid, but the call will cost you an extra $1.90 per month.
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Miss Tomlin smiles from the wings…
Joe Goodwin is concerned about the latest telco merger: Don’t get me wrong — I’m all for corporate success and the “trickle-down” theory. But didn’t we recently (about 20 years……
Haven’t heard anything about rates going up here in Texas yet, though the Yahoo DSL has actually gone down. My biggest concern is that somewhere down the road, I might have to change my sbcglobal.net address to att.com, or some form of that. Usually when that happens, your name is already taken by someone that had it with at&t before you were “merged.” I’ll probably end up with something along the lines of goodwin_mike136432@att.com. Don’t even get started on AT&T Wireless being bought by Cingular Wireless, who in turn was bought by SBC, and then SBC coming full circle and renaming itself as AT&T. Migraine anyone? Now what’s with this Bank One/Chase thing? I have accounts with both.
Always bear in mind the Republican mantra “The Super Wealthy Always Have Our Best of Interest at Heart” second only to “Large Corperations Are People Too” and “I Have No Recolection of That at This Time Your Honor”
Mike: They eventually labeled all my Bank One stuff as “Chase”. This is presumably a prelude to wiping out all of the “Bank One” entries on Wikipedia.
Fred: Brutal.
I guess I am not a big fan of change, especially corporate changes that affect me. Heck, I live in Dallas, Texas, and I still have my Bank of Oklahoma account from when I lived there. My paycheck is direct deposited, I pay my bills with online bill pay, and when that rare moment happens when I do have to deposit a physical check, they let me do it at the Bank of Texas, which is owned by the same company.
Why change? Besides, the gas attendant at the Walmart/Murphy’s gas station here always gets a kick out of my OU check card. He is a BIG OU FAN. That could be lethal here in Longhorns country. I have an older one that was canceled because I had thought I lost it. Maybe I could give it to him in exchange for a fill up.