Yet still more
AT&T Completes TCI acquisition
Excerpts from : biz.yahoo.com
The combined company will offer long distance and cellular phone service, cable television and high-speed Internet access. AT&T, the No. 1 U.S. long distance company, also will provide local phone service over TCI's cable TV wires instead of traditional phone lines.
Using cable TV wires to provide phone service, AT&T can bypass the Baby Bell's phone lines, and the costly access charges, to reach customers.
Over the coming months, the cable and new local phone services will be offered under the AT&T brandname. AT&T plans to offer the telephone service over the cable networks in 10 U.S. cities by year-end.
AT&T and TCI together will reach about one-third of the nation. To extend that reach to up to two-thirds of the country, AT&T forged a joint venture with TimeWarner Inc. (NYSE:TWX - news), the nation's largest cable television company, and is expected to form alliances with other cable companies such as MediaOne Group Inc. (NYSE:UMG - news), Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq:CMCSA - news) and Cox Communications Inc. (NYSE:COX - news).
Under the acquisition, TCI becomes AT&T's newest business unit, AT&T Broadband & Internet Services, and will be responsible for the company's cable ventures as well as its ownership interest in AtHome Corp (Nasdaq:ATHM - news), a high-speed Internet company. The unit will continue to be headquartered in the Denver area.
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Now that all this mega stuff is in place, I do not think that this capability will be limited to selling books, music CD's, DVD's or even BVD's. Think big, think global, think SHOWTIME!
Ed Perry
PS: see my post 6088 for the set top box link which got me started again on Convergence themes.
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