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Technology Stocks : AT&T -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FR1 who wrote (3978)	1/14/2001 9:19:10 PM
From: FR1	Respond to of 4298

I need to get some clarification. I think we are at a very important point in ATT history. AOL has been settled, the feds are lowering rates and deals are going to be made. I need to get some clarification on the rules. As I understood it: 1) The FCC gave T the choice, in the last merger, of selling Liberty or getting rid of their 30% ownership in RR and TWX. T was given a Dec deadline to state which way they wanted to go. 2) ATT wants to control the pipes for cable internet traffic. Therefore, Armstrong wants to try and retain control of RR. 3) At the Dec meeting, ATT said that they would sell Liberty provided a tax deal could be worked out with the Fed. 4) The FCC has decided they do not want T sitting on the board of directors of both RR and ATHM. Therefore, the FCC said that "provided a tax deal.." was not good enough and so they, the FCC, was deciding that T had to sell their ownership in RR. 5) T has disagreed with the FCC and says that they will sell Liberty by the due date in 2001. So this is still a unresolved issue. 6) It seems, with the AOL deal, that the FCC is trying to mandate that ATT sells its interest in RR. It seems crazy to me that they would stick that in the agreement since AOL/TWX does not have any legal control over ATT. The ownership issue is a problem between the FCC and ATT. It seems to me AOL/TWX can just ignore that stipulation saying that it is not under their legal authority to tell another company what to sell. Can someone straighten me out on this?

To: FR1 who wrote (3978)	1/14/2001 9:25:07 PM
From: engineer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4298

I did not just pick one day. The mangement at T has long been into avoiding getting rid of all the old style MONOPOLY types who think that they can spend money and not be fiscally responsible. I lived through the NCR fiasco, in which T bought them for $7.5B, screwed them up, sold them off in parts for a loss, then claimed more than $6B in restructuring charges. All the while hthe division that I worked with made a profit. IN SPITE of the screwups by AT&T to come in and force the business to change to their messup ways in Allentown, constantly interefeing wiht existing customer realtionships, going over my head to my boss to try to get me to switch fabs from NCR to AT&T, when they really did not have the technology to do it and so forth. It was a real disservice to the people who ran NCR Microelectronics and from what I saw they guys at AT&T microelectronics had no clue as to what they were doing. They even offered me the job of running the whole place in 1997, but I turned them down, as I figured they would never get rid of the career old world types EVER. There was a reason that they fired Mr. Allen, and it was mostly due to his hiding huge losses into restructuring charges when no real charges existed. It odes not suprise me that Mr. Armstrong makes just as bad decisions, as you outlined. That is a good part of doing your job as CEO, doing the correct what-ifs. If he were wrong 20% of the time, then it might be ok, but wrong 80%, then he needs to start doing something else. I stand on my point that T is making bad deicsion after bad deicsion and throwing away stockholders money like it is trash. Until they get rid of all the old time monopoly types, it isn;t going to change. Good luck in your investment in T. BTW - I talked to the guys at MSDW and they TOLD me that was what they were doing... the king has no clothes.....