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AT&T Announces Official Acquisition of BellSouth

Last week, AT&T Inc. announced that it closed the acquisition of the BellSouth Corporation. The transaction also consolidates ownership and management of Cingular Wireless and YELLOWPAGES.COM.

"AT&T will be an engine for innovation, competition, and growth for our customers at home and abroad," said AT&T Chairman and CEO Edward E. Whitacre Jr. "In the Southeast, we will build on BellSouth's excellent record of serving customers and communities. And we are ready to lead the way in a new era of integrated wireless services nationwide."

AT&T says it will immediately start to implement an integration process to converge the AT&T, BellSouth, and Cingular wireless and wireline Internet Protocol (IP) networks, combine product portfolios and integrate customer care capabilities. The new company plans to accelerate the introduction of innovative broadband services, such as IP-based services, while expanding the reach of broadband access in remote and rural locations in the traditional BellSouth region.

"AT&T, BellSouth, and Cingular have led in developing and deploying many of the communications services that customers depend on today, including broadband DSL and wireless technologies," said Whitacre. "Moving forward, AT&T will work to integrate these services for customers in the Southeast, across the country and around the world."

The completion of the BellSouth acquisition comes after an extensive review process, which included approval by or filings with 36 states, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as well as with three foreign countries. In order to receive bipartisan FCC approval, AT&T volunteered a number of commitments, including making broadband access increasingly affordable and available to consumers and supporting public safety.

AT&T has committed to making broadband services available through a combination of technologies to 100 percent of residential living units in its 22-state local- phone-service territory by the end of 2007. AT&T says it also plans to repatriate 3,000 jobs currently outsourced by BellSouth outside the United States, as well as to make its disaster-recovery capabilities available in order to facilitate the restoration of services in the former BellSouth region, in the event of a hurricane or other natural disaster.

"These commitments reflect our long history of providing consumers and businesses with the most advanced and affordable communications services," said Whitacre. "We can't wait to show people what the new AT&T can do."

AT&T's corporate headquarters will remain in San Antonio. The new AT&T Southeast (formerly BellSouth Corporation) and Cingular will continue to be based in Atlanta.

For more information on the acquisition , check out the press release AT&T and BellSouth Join to Create a Premier Global Communications Company.