Free Republic

Commerce: Lawmakers, bureaucrats and busybody groups have expressed reservations about AT&T's plan to buy T-Mobile. Why should a voluntary, peaceful agreement between private groups be any of their concern? AT&T, the country's second-largest wireless carrier, has agreed to buy T-Mobile, the fourth-largest, for $39 billion. The combined company would become the biggest wireless carrier in the nation, serving more than 40% of the cellphone market. But first, the deal must be OK'd by meddlesome legislators and useless regulators. The acquisition needs the approval of the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, as well as the...

Today: January 30, 2005 at 16:31:15 PST Tiny Louisiana Community Gets Telephone Service ASSOCIATED PRESS MINK, La. (AP) - There's a fish-fry Monday in this hamlet of 15 households to celebrate big news: phone service. Gov. Kathleen Blanco plans to call 83-year-old Mink resident Alma Louise Bolton from Baton Rouge to mark the occasion, which finally connects one of the nation's last rural areas without access to regular phone service. "We started in early 1970 trying to get a phone," Bolton said. "We'd talk to the phone company but they'd never call back. Some in the community bought CBs (citizen...

09:52 PM CST on Sunday, January 30, 2005 Associated Press There's a fish fry today to celebrate the big news in Mink, La., a hamlet of 15 households: phone service. Gov. Kathleen Blanco plans to call 83-year-old Alma Louise Bolton from Baton Rouge today to celebrate the end of isolation for one of the nation's last areas without regular phone service. Long-distance charge: BellSouth Corp. spent $700,000 – or about $47,000 per phone – to extend about 30 miles of cable through thick forests to Mink, in the Kisatchie National Forest. The rest of the state's phone bills will cover...

<p>July 28, 2003 -- Jane Barbe, whose voice was familiar to millions of telephone users across the country who ever dialed a wrong number or had to "Please listen to the following options" in a voice-mail system, died July 18 in Roswell, Ga., of complications from cancer. She was 74.</p>

Cable horrors slice $13.1bn out of AT&T By ComputerWire Posted: 07/24/2002 at 02:59 EST AT&T Corp has swallowed a huge $13.1bn charge for the write-down in the value of its cable operations, and the New York-based carrier expects the revenue shortfall in the third quarter to be greater than the 6.1% slide recorded in the previous three months. In the second quarter to June 30, the loss was $12.7bn, down from income of $167m on revenue down 8.7% at $12.1bn. At the mid-term stage, the loss was $13.7bn, up from a loss of $25m on revenue down 9.9% lower at...