AT&T selling Conn. wireline ops for $2 billion

[unhappycamper]

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/12/17/2952526/att-selling-conn-wireline-ops.html

AT&T selling Conn. wireline ops for $2 billion
The Associated PressDecember 17, 2013 Updated 8 minutes ago

DALLAS — AT&T has agreed to sell its Connecticut wireline operations to Frontier Communications Corp. for $2 billion as it continues its transition to unwired operations and a cloud network.

Shares of both companies rose in Tuesday premarket trading.

The deal includes wireline network assets and consumer, business and wholesale customer relationships. Frontier said that it will also acquire AT&T's U-verse video and satellite TV customers in Connecticut.

AT&T will receive the $2 billion in cash for its subsidiaries The Southern New England Telephone Co. and SNET America Inc. About 2,700 wireline workers that support AT&T's Connecticut operations will transfer to Frontier when the transaction closes. Frontier currently has more than 200 employees at its headquarters in Stamford, Conn.



unhappycamper comment: The phone company has been trying to sell SNETco for years. The problem as they see it:

* unions
* not wireless
* unions

[Demeter]

1. ATT without wires?

That means no built in base, customers don't even have to cut the cord! Are they Crazy?

[unhappycamper]

2. Naaaah. The phone companies have been trying to sell the wireline bidness for a long time.

Wireless is the future!

If you look at telco investment over the last fifty years, it was new CO machines (computers), fiber(FIOS) and lotsa computers to get into FIOS/video delivery service. Due to previous investment in the 'phone' system, it costs the telco providing long distance service $0.01 per minute of use. You read that correctly: one penny per minute to talk anywhere in the Continental United States. I suspect you pay more than one penny per minute.

But the persistent problem is that wireline operations are heavily regulated by states. And (at least in Massachusetts) wireline ops also are unionized. Get rid of the unions and get rid of the wireline stuff and they will be happy campers.

I spent 21 years at New England Telephone/NYNEX/Bell Atlantic/Bell Atlantic/Verizon.