Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: John in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio
Speaker 1: and a love of all things tech, and it is
Speaker 1: time to conclude our classic episode Trifecta about A T
Speaker 1: and T. Yes, we're about to listen to the A
Speaker 1: T and T Story, Part three, which originally published back
Speaker 1: on November eleventh, two thousand thirteen. If you have not
Speaker 1: listened to parts one and two, those published the previous
Speaker 1: two fridays, so you can check those out, and let's
Speaker 1: check back in with two thousand thirteen tech Stuff. The
Speaker 1: deal was that A T. T Was getting out the
Speaker 1: local telephone business and concentrating solely on on providing service
Speaker 1: for a long distance as well as getting into the
Speaker 1: burgeoning computer industry, right, which would be very important or
Speaker 1: will be very important for this current episode that we
Speaker 1: are about to embark ponds. This is uh. I titled
Speaker 1: this in my notes as part three, getting to the
Speaker 1: bit that we're in now because I'm great at titles.
Speaker 1: So that brings us up to three. When A T.
Speaker 1: T opens the first commercial cellular telephone system in the
Speaker 1: telephone system. That was an interesting embossis on that salable
Speaker 1: in the United States in Chicago under Ameritech, which was
Speaker 1: soon to be divested from A T and T according
Speaker 1: to those rules that we talked about laid down in
Speaker 1: the nine settlement of the antitrust lawsuit. But at that
Speaker 1: time in Merritech was still under A T and T
Speaker 1: because again, it takes time to actually act upon these
Speaker 1: these judgments. So here we have the first cellular telephone
Speaker 1: system for commercial use, and uh yeah, the cellular approach
Speaker 1: was uh something that really made mobile telephones possible because
Speaker 1: if you remember from our last episode, A T and
Speaker 1: T had created mobile phones, but they would connect to
Speaker 1: a specific radio antenna and you had to be within
Speaker 1: range to use it, and if you moved out of change,
Speaker 1: that was it. Your call would just end. Um. Cellular
Speaker 1: telephones had a bunch of towers that will allow you
Speaker 1: to move within an out of range of various towers.
Speaker 1: There's kind of a handshake and electrying to handshake involved
Speaker 1: where you would continue to get service even as you
Speaker 1: moved out of one tower's operating area into another. And
Speaker 1: all of this technology was thanks to advancements that came
Speaker 1: out of a T and T Labs. Basically the it's
Speaker 1: it's that that handshake that Jonathan is is talking about.
Speaker 1: You know, let's let's the cells automatically transfer call from
Speaker 1: one tower to the next as as a caller moves
Speaker 1: through them. And Yep, that came out of what was
Speaker 1: formerly or I guess currently at that very moment, still
Speaker 1: Bell Labs, but would very soon become a T and
Speaker 1: T Labs. Yeah. So it's um one of those one
Speaker 1: of those crazy developments that gives us the ability to
Speaker 1: use technology the way we do today. Just imagine if
Speaker 1: we had not come up with that, if a T
Speaker 1: and T and not come up with it, let's say that,
Speaker 1: you know, it had been delayed several years, we'd be
Speaker 1: in a very different world right now. So it was
Speaker 1: pretty amazing stuff that that same year, a researcher at
Speaker 1: A T and T named Beyond strew Strip, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure I mispronounced his name term. I did not look
Speaker 1: it up. I didn't even write his name in my
Speaker 1: notes because I was unwilling to try to pronounce it.
Speaker 1: He debuted C plus plus. Yeah, yeah it was. It
Speaker 1: was so much better than C. It got two pluses.
Speaker 1: But yeah, C plus plus is an object oriented programming
Speaker 1: language that came out of the Bell Labs development laboratory.
Speaker 1: So that's a little more redundant. In January one four,
Speaker 1: it's early, y'all. So in January one, that's when Bell
Speaker 1: system ceases to be Yes, this is the official end
Speaker 1: of everything that that needed to end according to those
Speaker 1: agreements from right. So now we've gotten the boy where
Speaker 1: A T and T is divested of those other companies
Speaker 1: and is its own entity. Uh. It retains long distance
Speaker 1: operations as well as the R and D labs and manufacturing,
Speaker 1: so all of that belongs under the umbrella of A
Speaker 1: T and T. And then all that local services handled
Speaker 1: by those seven divested regional and that year will access
Speaker 1: carrier selection begins, which is a ruling by the FCC
Speaker 1: said that all telephone customers should be given a choice
Speaker 1: as to which long distance company they would use when
Speaker 1: dialing long distance numbers. So, uh that you know, now,
Speaker 1: the regional operating companies, even though they used to be
Speaker 1: part of A T and T, could not give a
Speaker 1: T and T preferential treatment. They could not say, this
Speaker 1: is the company that you have to use if you're
Speaker 1: going to make long distance they had to give you
Speaker 1: open access to all competitors. So A T and T
Speaker 1: at that time also begins to lower long distance rates.
Speaker 1: Um and they said that. They said that it was
Speaker 1: improvements in their infrastructure that lowered costs and that allowed
Speaker 1: them to lower the rates. Really, what I think was
Speaker 1: happening was that because they had I mean, A T.
Speaker 1: T went from having nearly fifty billion in assets before
Speaker 1: the breakup to thirty four billion after after this mob
Speaker 1: Bel to Baby Bell breakup, which is a seventy s
Speaker 1: drop an asset value, which is pretty alarming when you're
Speaker 1: a giant company. Um and so, so competitors at the time,
Speaker 1: like Sprint and m c I were pricing to undersell
Speaker 1: A T and T pretty seriously. You guys might remember
Speaker 1: some of the commercials that were coming out around that
Speaker 1: time of just the crazy backbiting price war stuff that
Speaker 1: was going on. And remember, you know, m c I
Speaker 1: was the company that had led the charge against A
Speaker 1: T and T back in the seventies that eventually evolved
Speaker 1: into that antitrust lawsuit. So this is you know, A T.
Speaker 1: T said that it's because of improvements and service, but
Speaker 1: in reality, I think we can say that This was
Speaker 1: so that they could remain competitive now that it was
Speaker 1: more of a level playing ground in the long distance space,
Speaker 1: and if they didn't lower their prices then they had
Speaker 1: a real risk of losing their customers. The you know,
Speaker 1: these these two competitors and and others as well, would
Speaker 1: would take huge gnawing bites out of A T and
Speaker 1: T over the next several years. But um but a
Speaker 1: T nonetheless would see a six increase in long distance
Speaker 1: calling between now and now being over the next fifteen years.
Speaker 1: So you know, long distance was still a very major
Speaker 1: thing because wireless didn't exist. We then really moved on
Speaker 1: to a post long distance world. I can't remember the
Speaker 1: last time I was charged for a long distance call
Speaker 1: that wasn't, say, an international call. It was about two
Speaker 1: thousand one for me. Wow, So did everyone just move
Speaker 1: near you? Or was that when things changed? That's when
Speaker 1: I got a cell phone? Oh? Got you? All right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's about when I did too, I'm sure, I think
Speaker 1: maybe a little earlier. It's hard for me to remember
Speaker 1: years ago by so quickly. Alright, So between four and
Speaker 1: nothing happened. Actually, I just didn't find anything that I
Speaker 1: thought was stuff happened. I just didn't find anything I
Speaker 1: found particularly noteworthy to add in my notes. Me neither,
Speaker 1: So let's go to excellent. That's when A T and
Speaker 1: T lays down the tapped eight, the T A T eight,
Speaker 1: which was another transatlantic telephone cable. This one made a
Speaker 1: fiber optics Yeah, so across the Atlantic obviously, and could
Speaker 1: carry ten times the number of calls the earlier copper
Speaker 1: cable could handle. Now remember the originally we were talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, copper cable able to handle thirty or forty
Speaker 1: calls at most. The earliest one is only able to
Speaker 1: handle one time. By this time, so you think, oh,
Speaker 1: ten times the number, why is it like so it's
Speaker 1: a hundred calls. No, by this time they had improved
Speaker 1: the technology significantly. We're talking forty thousand simultaneous calls. So
Speaker 1: when all of your buddies want to call all of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, each other across the pond. This is what
Speaker 1: makes it possible without getting a signal saying sorry, all
Speaker 1: lines are busy. Uh in T Labs began working on
Speaker 1: h D t v UM, specifically on the kind of
Speaker 1: high speed signal processing problems that arise when a computer
Speaker 1: needs to you know, receive de code and display a
Speaker 1: large amount of data in real time. But this is
Speaker 1: pretty impressive for those of you who are HDTV enthusiasts.
Speaker 1: Here in the United States, HDTV had a fairly late start.
Speaker 1: It got earlier start in Japan, uh and it took
Speaker 1: a while for there to be an agreed upon set
Speaker 1: of standards guiding HDTV because obviously you need to be
Speaker 1: able to have all the different players involved working on
Speaker 1: those same set standards. The delivery of the quality of
Speaker 1: the signal needs to be correct. The manufacturers need to
Speaker 1: be working on a similar approach. So this was very
Speaker 1: early on. Then A T and T was looking at
Speaker 1: this is saying, this is going to be a thing.
Speaker 1: It's not a thing now, It's probably not gonna be
Speaker 1: a thing for maybe ten years, but we need to
Speaker 1: work on it now. It would also turn out to
Speaker 1: be pretty forward thinking for them, because they would wind
Speaker 1: up getting pretty seriously into the cable industry in just
Speaker 1: another few years. Right forward thinking man. For some reason,
Speaker 1: I love that phrase. Bell Labs also was working at
Speaker 1: that time on a speech actuated manipulator also known as
Speaker 1: SAM oh. Right, yeah, and that that would that would
Speaker 1: become kind of important another couple of years as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of neat. This was like an early pre
Speaker 1: to trying to create a robot that could respond to
Speaker 1: natural language commands, so things like turn left or lower
Speaker 1: your arm, that kind of thing. Uh, And it was
Speaker 1: just really the early days sort of a proof of
Speaker 1: concept to create robots that could do. This also meant
Speaker 1: that they were working very hard on improving just natural
Speaker 1: language recognition, which is that's incredibly difficult. It's hard to
Speaker 1: teach a computer that, you know, we can say the
Speaker 1: same command a hundred different ways. For the computer to
Speaker 1: be able to interpret all one hundred of those variations
Speaker 1: as a single command and differentiate it from every other
Speaker 1: command is phenomenal. Yeah, especially in English, which is pretty
Speaker 1: messy in really wonderful ways. When we start adding an
Speaker 1: idiom that's really like wave it around like you just
Speaker 1: don't care that robot is going to have some trouble.
Speaker 1: First of all, it doesn't care. Robots don't care. They
Speaker 1: don't that robot to pretend to care. Yeah, that's about
Speaker 1: as good as we can get. I mean it's yeah,
Speaker 1: I've known some people that way too, So I'm not
Speaker 1: going to speak down to romost too much. Um. Now
Speaker 1: moving on to nine one, that's when A T and
Speaker 1: T acquired in CR Corporation, which is a computer manufacturing company.
Speaker 1: I think with this they were really hoping to start
Speaker 1: hopping that that software hardware divide or or I guess
Speaker 1: it's the networking hardware divide more so they again we're
Speaker 1: looking forward to too yeah, to really get in that
Speaker 1: because I mean that that was one of the things
Speaker 1: that they were allowed to do now after that nineteen
Speaker 1: two judgment. Uh, and this was kind of a real
Speaker 1: serious move into that space. UM. In two, they unveiled
Speaker 1: the Voice English Spanish Translator or VEST, which was first
Speaker 1: developed back in nine but it was first unveiled in
Speaker 1: ninety two, so they're still working on those improvements to
Speaker 1: voice technology. He could recognize about four hundred fifty words
Speaker 1: and around a billion different combinations. And the way it
Speaker 1: would work is that you would speak into the microphone
Speaker 1: the saw off where would first attempt to identify what
Speaker 1: language you are speaking, either English or Spanish. At that point,
Speaker 1: when it had identified the language, it would then translate
Speaker 1: what you were saying into the other language, so English
Speaker 1: Spanish or Spanish to English via text. What it would
Speaker 1: do is break down your sentences into little basic component
Speaker 1: parts and then translate those component parts, which anyone who
Speaker 1: has done any translation knows is not a you know,
Speaker 1: full proof way of translating, because sometimes if you break,
Speaker 1: can involve multiple parts of a sentence. Again, especially in
Speaker 1: English where your ward order is not perhaps as structured
Speaker 1: as it might be in other languages. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would love to see this in action, just because it
Speaker 1: again is tackling one of those fundamentally difficult problems for
Speaker 1: human computer interaction. A T and T merged with maccaw
Speaker 1: Cellular Communications Incorporated, which at that time was the largest
Speaker 1: provider of cellular service in the United States. So that
Speaker 1: acquisition eventually means the the entity that was McCaw Cellular
Speaker 1: Communications becomes A T T Wireless along with another company
Speaker 1: will mention in a bit. But that same year A
Speaker 1: ten T also introduced the Model seventy video phone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was kind of a video teleconferencing hardware. And you
Speaker 1: know that they had had such rousing lack of success
Speaker 1: with their picture phone that that but but but they
Speaker 1: realized that people were more willing to do this a
Speaker 1: and an work environment and be on a computer than
Speaker 1: they were on a phone. Yeah, so this was allowing
Speaker 1: simultaneous video transmission, so that it kind of predecessor to
Speaker 1: the video software we used today for things like Skype
Speaker 1: or other Google hangouts, those kind of video hangout things.
Speaker 1: It also would allow some limited use of letting, like
Speaker 1: the person who's calling you manipulate files so you can
Speaker 1: open the files within it and have so it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a video conferencing system very early on. So
Speaker 1: pretty impressive considering. Yeah, I mean, you know, that's we're
Speaker 1: still talking like this is still the very early days
Speaker 1: of the World Wide Web. Keep in mind out that
Speaker 1: that really hadn't even launched till nine two. So seeing
Speaker 1: some video communication stuff in ninety three was exciting. You know,
Speaker 1: I can remember the first time I ever saw any
Speaker 1: kind of video communication. I remember exactly what I was doing.
Speaker 1: What what were you doing? I was at the Experimental
Speaker 1: Prototype Community of Tomorrow or EPCUT as it is called now,
Speaker 1: it's no longer known as its full name. So they
Speaker 1: used to have these consoles mounted on columns where you
Speaker 1: could walk up to the consoles. Yeah, hellttle touchscreen interface.
Speaker 1: You press a button and then you would get greeted
Speaker 1: by a cast member who would ask what what you needed,
Speaker 1: and you could ask them anything that had to do
Speaker 1: with the parks. Eventually you could do things like even
Speaker 1: make uh dining reservations. That way, you could say I
Speaker 1: would like to eat at Mexico at noon, and they
Speaker 1: would they would make that Mexico being the pavilion in
Speaker 1: the World Showcase. It wouldn't actually to me now we
Speaker 1: still don't have that technology. I'm waiting on it. I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't put it past Disney to just have that
Speaker 1: in the back pocket. But yeah, but it must have
Speaker 1: been right around this same time, all right, right in
Speaker 1: the early nineties, right, speaking of names no longer meaning
Speaker 1: that long drawn out thing that they used to mean
Speaker 1: in that's when A T. T legally changed their name
Speaker 1: from the American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation to just a T.
Speaker 1: T corp Or corporation. I mean the corporation stays the same, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it was just a T and T. So now
Speaker 1: it's as telegraphs were no longer a thing, kind of
Speaker 1: like when you look at certain names that used to
Speaker 1: mean one thing, now it's just the initials. So you
Speaker 1: might ask, like, what does AMC mean? And it used
Speaker 1: to me in American movie classics. Now it's just a
Speaker 1: m C. That's just the name, so same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So moving up to that's when A T and T
Speaker 1: restructures into three separate companies. So one of them is
Speaker 1: a T and T. That's the services company. It's the
Speaker 1: one that we all know and are familiar with. The
Speaker 1: second one becomes Lucent Technologies. Now that is a products
Speaker 1: and systems company. Ah, it's really kind of a manufacturing
Speaker 1: company for certain types of electronics. And the third is
Speaker 1: a computer company that returns to the NCR name. You know,
Speaker 1: they purchased NCR just a few years earlier and loosen NCR.
Speaker 1: Eventually both spin off as their own companies. Uh the
Speaker 1: following year. In fact, we got a little bit more
Speaker 1: we want to say about the following year. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, let's take a quick break to thank
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Speaker 1: has a lot going for it that I really enjoyed,
Speaker 1: and uh, that's something that I will watch, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll just do a marathon session, sit down and just
Speaker 1: watch episode after episode, and it really becomes a challenge
Speaker 1: to figure out when I'm going to turn it off,
Speaker 1: which is a great problem to have. Go check it out. Alright,
Speaker 1: so it's back to nine six. That's when the Telecommunications
Speaker 1: Act of nine becomes law. You know, I was going
Speaker 1: to make a joke about how they wanted to call
Speaker 1: the Telecommunications Act of nine the Telecommunications Act of but
Speaker 1: it published in nineteen nine, and they thought I would
Speaker 1: confuse everyone. But then I realized I made that joke
Speaker 1: in the last episode. Well good, I'm glad that you're
Speaker 1: growing as a host. Thanks. Yeah, it doesn't stop me
Speaker 1: from making jokes. It just it just it just prompts
Speaker 1: me to explain why I'm making the same joke twice.
Speaker 1: I know, I'm I'm lame. It's okay, I've dealt with it. Okay.
Speaker 1: So this so this Act was an FCC attempt to
Speaker 1: to regulate the industry to promote greater competition. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: again it was Yeah, because again it was it was
Speaker 1: a growing industry. This is another example of how technology
Speaker 1: evolves faster than the legal system can necessarily handle. So
Speaker 1: we get these big leaps in technology relatively speaking, and
Speaker 1: then the legal system says, you know, this has outgrown
Speaker 1: the parameters for what we had envisioned because the technology
Speaker 1: can do more than what we what it used to
Speaker 1: be able to. Right. Previously, you know, cable and telephones
Speaker 1: and data had all been very separate, and this brought
Speaker 1: them all under one umbrella. Right, So similar to how
Speaker 1: we see cable companies that do both the transmission of
Speaker 1: data and they provide some of that data as in
Speaker 1: they create content that would also become you know, another
Speaker 1: challenge that they were still struggling with today because you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's getting very messy. If one person owns all
Speaker 1: the roads but allows everybody to play on those roads,
Speaker 1: net neutrality is maintained and everyone's happy. But if everyone
Speaker 1: owns all the roads and also owns a lot of
Speaker 1: the buses they go on those roads and then decides
Speaker 1: to let those buses get the express lane and everyone
Speaker 1: else gets the slow lane, that's when you start getting
Speaker 1: the problems. So the Telecommunications Act was sort of a
Speaker 1: predecessor to some of the Acts and some of the
Speaker 1: proposed legislation that would follow to try and maintain net neutrality. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course that's, like I said, that's a battle
Speaker 1: that's still ongoing to this day. Absolutely. That's when A
Speaker 1: T and T signs a merger agreement with t c I,
Speaker 1: which was a cable company. Yeah. They were also working
Speaker 1: at the time on converting their entire network from analog
Speaker 1: to digital data delivery. So yeah, in nine if you
Speaker 1: remember from our last podcast, this is actually when that
Speaker 1: final electro mechanical switch was switched over to computer I switch.
Speaker 1: I bet there was a big ceremony. I hope that
Speaker 1: electro mechanical switches enjoying retirement. But A T. T also
Speaker 1: went back to the consumer local telephone business because it
Speaker 1: introduced a residential service in New York. So first time
Speaker 1: A T and T gets into the local telephone service
Speaker 1: since it had divested itself of those regional bell companies
Speaker 1: back in two write Um. They also completed that merger
Speaker 1: with t c I and started looking to acquire a
Speaker 1: second cable company called Media one. Yeah, they're really serious
Speaker 1: about now. And they also rolled out the largest DSL
Speaker 1: initiative in the industry for broadband customers. I was never
Speaker 1: a DSL customer. I was always a cable modem customer,
Speaker 1: but I've got a lot of friends who used DSL
Speaker 1: for both voice and data, and yeah, that was that
Speaker 1: was a big deal back then. Oh sure. Well, at
Speaker 1: the time, long distance revenue was decreasing for a T
Speaker 1: and T at a rate about twenty each year due
Speaker 1: to these these changes in the way that the world
Speaker 1: was working, in the way that people were accessing information
Speaker 1: and telecommunications, and uh so, you know, they were although
Speaker 1: they were working and they had spent some hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollars on acquiring these cable TV companies, they were still
Speaker 1: pretty dependent on long distance as as a profit, and
Speaker 1: so they were kind of they were kind of scared. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had to look at other means of generating revenue
Speaker 1: because with the the threat to long distance looming and
Speaker 1: getting getting worse each year, they knew that if they
Speaker 1: were to have any viability as a as a any
Speaker 1: type of company, let alone a major, enormous company, they
Speaker 1: had to get into new types of business. And so,
Speaker 1: as you know, terror is a great motivator, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, and they they really doubled down on the
Speaker 1: broadband approach and it ended up paying off big time.
Speaker 1: Also in that year in T and D started research
Speaker 1: into something one of my favorite subjects because it's so
Speaker 1: crazy and wonky, quantum computing. Yeah, so there's been all
Speaker 1: over a T T Labs looking into quantum computers. Um.
Speaker 1: We've mentioned quantum computers in earlier episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: but just to let you guys know, they're crazy, y'all.
Speaker 1: So your basic computer relies on binary uh computer language,
Speaker 1: which are zeros and ones. Your quantum computer relies on
Speaker 1: those are also known as bits. The quantum computer relies
Speaker 1: on cubits. Now a cubit theoretically um, actually, I guess really,
Speaker 1: because there have been quantum computers built, they just don't
Speaker 1: last very long. A cubit can act in superposition, meaning
Speaker 1: that it's both zero and one and all values in
Speaker 1: between at the same time simultaneously. Jonathan from breaking in
Speaker 1: to say, we will be back to talk more about
Speaker 1: a T T in a moment, but first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. So theoretically you can use a significantly
Speaker 1: powerful quantum computer, and has to have a certain number
Speaker 1: of cubits for this to be viable. But you can
Speaker 1: use a powerful quantum computer to solve certain types of
Speaker 1: problems much more quickly than you would with a classical computer.
Speaker 1: Not all problems would be great in a quantum computer,
Speaker 1: but if it's a problem, for example, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out which two enormous prime numbers were multiplied together to
Speaker 1: get this particular product, a quantum computer can do that
Speaker 1: way faster than a classical computer. Classical computer might take
Speaker 1: hundreds of years to solve a particularly difficult problem. A
Speaker 1: quantum computer might do it in a in an hour.
Speaker 1: And it's all because it's able to solve I'm oversimplifying,
Speaker 1: but it's able to solve multiple versions of the problem
Speaker 1: all at the same time, and then assigned probabilities to
Speaker 1: which one is the correct answer. So A T and
Speaker 1: T was looking into that as early as so two thousand.
Speaker 1: Uh lall right, well, now they've got the acquisitions of
Speaker 1: T c I and Media One, which makes A T
Speaker 1: n T the largest cable company in the United States. Um,
Speaker 1: the service is called a T and T Broadband, and
Speaker 1: a T and T itself reorganizes again into three major companies.
Speaker 1: So you've got a T and T, a T and
Speaker 1: T wireless, and a T n T Broadband. And uh
Speaker 1: that's also the year when data traffic overtakes voice traffic
Speaker 1: on the A T and T network for the first time. UM.
Speaker 1: Not surprising, but I'm sure now there's way more data
Speaker 1: than voice. Has to be overwhelming at this point. Even
Speaker 1: though these these acquisitions of TC and Media one were
Speaker 1: really terrific for A T and T and moving them
Speaker 1: in in a direction that the company thought was going
Speaker 1: to be really great, that they spent over a hundred
Speaker 1: billion on those acquisitions, and they had kind of gone
Speaker 1: into debt in order to do so. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: the company was in a little bit of trouble and
Speaker 1: they were hoping by by separating out into these three
Speaker 1: separate services that they were going to be able to
Speaker 1: isolate that debt and also you know, hopefully raised some
Speaker 1: funds on the stock market, which the folks running the
Speaker 1: stock market kind of picked up on. They sort of
Speaker 1: saw through this clever plan and um, and the company
Speaker 1: would wind up losing another hundred billion of market value
Speaker 1: over the next couple of years. UM. So, so the
Speaker 1: company was not doing I mean, it was moving in
Speaker 1: interesting ways, and I think that you know, doing clever stuff, right.
Speaker 1: But in the long term, the moves they made were
Speaker 1: good choices, but in the short term, it meant that
Speaker 1: they suffered quite a bit because you know, we were
Speaker 1: We've talked about how a T and T it was
Speaker 1: built on the foundation of long distance telephone service. When
Speaker 1: that stops becoming a way of generating significant revenue, it
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily matter if your company has diversified, if everyone
Speaker 1: still identifies your company as being a long long distance
Speaker 1: service provider. Right. Also, you know, up until that point,
Speaker 1: they had been they had been depending on long distance
Speaker 1: profits to drive the company. But but long distance was
Speaker 1: losing revenue um at a rate of each year. Yes,
Speaker 1: so it was obvious that they had to start really
Speaker 1: investigating other opportunities. So this broadband opportunity was a chance
Speaker 1: for them to kind of really shift major gears in
Speaker 1: what their company is all about and remain a viable
Speaker 1: company because I mean, you know, fear is a great motivator.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, if you're scared, then you you're
Speaker 1: willing to try some some pretty uh, pretty radical things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in this case, they really went in broadband, and
Speaker 1: it turns out that it wasn't you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: a bad idea. In fact, two thousand also was the
Speaker 1: year when a T and T saw more data traffic
Speaker 1: than voice traffic on their network. It was the first
Speaker 1: time that had ever happened. I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 1: that is, you know, obviously multiplied many times now because
Speaker 1: look at the enormous amount of data that transfers through
Speaker 1: whether and your calls aren't usually taking up quite as
Speaker 1: much as like YouTube video and you've got you've got
Speaker 1: file transfers. I mean that that takes up a lot
Speaker 1: of space. So I'm sure that that might have even
Speaker 1: been the last year that they saw, you know, or
Speaker 1: maybe the last year they saw voice traffic being greater
Speaker 1: than data traffic. Would not be surprised. Two thousand one, however,
Speaker 1: that's when a T and T Wireless becomes an independent company.
Speaker 1: It spends off from a T and T. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a it's initial public offering, which you know is is
Speaker 1: stock market terms for for going public and selling shares.
Speaker 1: It's like a Debutan ball for stock like that. It
Speaker 1: was the largest i PO in American history at the time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: big deal. And also that was the year when Comcast
Speaker 1: offered to acquire A T and T broadband, and a
Speaker 1: T and T said, you know what, we will accept
Speaker 1: your kind office sir, thank you. UM, all all of
Speaker 1: this hullabaloo over over, you know, kind of diverse jing
Speaker 1: and trying to split stuff up and manage their debt
Speaker 1: didn't prevent innovation. Later that year, their customer service system,
Speaker 1: how may I help you? Debuted and more natural language
Speaker 1: more natural language stuff, which I think is probably the
Speaker 1: point that they were trying to come to with all
Speaker 1: of these previous natural language related I mean, maybe not
Speaker 1: the specific point, but they were like, hey, you know
Speaker 1: what would be really useful for this, um it was
Speaker 1: an excellent application service. So the idea is that when
Speaker 1: you call in, you get a automated response. So it's
Speaker 1: not an actual quote, real human being on the other end,
Speaker 1: uh end quote. It's rather a kind of robot. But
Speaker 1: they try and have as realistic a synthetic voice as possible,
Speaker 1: and the goal is to allow the customer to use
Speaker 1: whatever language that he or she needs to express the
Speaker 1: problem they're having, and then it can respond to that.
Speaker 1: So instead of having you wait through a menu where
Speaker 1: you know, for telephone service, press one, for a cable
Speaker 1: press two, you know that kind of thing, you would
Speaker 1: just say, you can hypothetically talk to the robot, and
Speaker 1: I could just be things like, uh, you know, when
Speaker 1: I call usually it's early in the morning, so there's
Speaker 1: things like cable down fixed now fire bad. Personally, I
Speaker 1: kind of missed the days when I could just punch
Speaker 1: buttons and not have to pretend to talk to a robot.
Speaker 1: I sort of get angry when I talked to robots.
Speaker 1: I wind up yelling at them. The fact that we're
Speaker 1: able to get Lauren and in front of a microphone
Speaker 1: at all is a miracle. Every week, uh mostly involves
Speaker 1: applying her with chocolate. Are you suggesting that you are
Speaker 1: a robot? Oh? Yeah? And so the company also launched
Speaker 1: Natural Voices, which is that synthesized voice program. So it
Speaker 1: was a combination of the natural language recognition software and
Speaker 1: this new synthesized human voice that was meant to be
Speaker 1: as close to a natural voice as possible, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like you're speaking to a robot or someone
Speaker 1: who puts the wrong embossis on the wrong salabl um.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever had one of those
Speaker 1: calls where it's like, hello, thank you for calling service,
Speaker 1: you know, Tuesday. Yeah, it's just weird. So, you know,
Speaker 1: getting that to be more natural obviously creates a better
Speaker 1: customer experience for most people, I would say, of course,
Speaker 1: they were also around that time working on a bunch
Speaker 1: of greater, greater network related issues. In two thousand two,
Speaker 1: they rolled out yeah new optical network which was the
Speaker 1: idea of the optical network was to decrease the problems
Speaker 1: that would arise in the event of a natural disaster
Speaker 1: or a massive failure. So it's kind of a response
Speaker 1: emergency response for an infrastructure, meaning that if there were
Speaker 1: say a hurricane hitting the Eastern Cboard and the phone
Speaker 1: lines went down, this would help them respond faster to
Speaker 1: get that repaired and return service, which is obviously important
Speaker 1: for any kind of emergency situation, so very important, and
Speaker 1: then work. They also worked to branch out as an
Speaker 1: enterprise networking company. Before they had really been marketing their
Speaker 1: their electronics and computer services is to the average consumer.
Speaker 1: Now that we're thinking, you know, there's huge market in
Speaker 1: the enterprise world where we can we can market directly
Speaker 1: to other large companies and say let us handle these
Speaker 1: systems for you. We know what we're doing, we're experts
Speaker 1: in this field, and give us money. The end of
Speaker 1: that sentence. But yeah. Two thousand three, Uh, they rolled
Speaker 1: out the voice Tone product, which allowed customers to speak
Speaker 1: with computers using natural language, so very similar to them
Speaker 1: may I help you, But this time this was a
Speaker 1: product that you could get if you were an enterprise,
Speaker 1: for example, and you needed to have that same sort
Speaker 1: of capability. So something that have been developed for in
Speaker 1: house a T and T use or at least within
Speaker 1: their customer service department. Yeah, it's an actual product. Always
Speaker 1: a good idea if you are able to create a
Speaker 1: you know, a usable system for that that's modular that
Speaker 1: other people can use in their own networks. Uh. Two
Speaker 1: thousand four, they introduced voice over Internet Protocol or for customers.
Speaker 1: This obviously is allowing you to make voice phone calls
Speaker 1: over Internet protocol. So it's using that same packet switching
Speaker 1: kind of software that uh, your regular Internet traffic uses,
Speaker 1: but for voice trend uh voice communication. UM. I had
Speaker 1: friends who had voipe call like telephones voice telephones, which
Speaker 1: were the idea was that, you know, using the data
Speaker 1: service was sometimes a cheaper alternative to using voice service
Speaker 1: like regular voice lines. The there are, or at least
Speaker 1: there were some drawbacks with voipe phones, especially early days
Speaker 1: involved like if you were to dial in nine, Uh,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't necessarily know a route that call to the
Speaker 1: closest center because yeah, because it would be over Internet protocol.
Speaker 1: Not Yeah, I might make a call to the server.
Speaker 1: Might I might make a call in Atlanta and get Tucson,
Speaker 1: which is terribly helpful if my house is on fire,
Speaker 1: unless my house happens to be in Tucson, in which
Speaker 1: case I don't know why I'm in Atlanta making that call.
Speaker 1: Come me neither. Yeah, you know, you know, stranger things. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: in two thousand four, a company acquired a ten T
Speaker 1: wireless that would be Singular, which was owned by a
Speaker 1: little company called SBC, which is going to become extremely
Speaker 1: important in the next year. Yeah, yeah, why don't we
Speaker 1: just go ahead to two thousand five, So SBC, alright, SBC.
Speaker 1: Now this is one of those companies again that had
Speaker 1: named itself after its initials, So originally SBC stood for
Speaker 1: something not just not just those letters, right, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be Southwestern Bell Company a K. It was one
Speaker 1: of the baby bells that split off way back in
Speaker 1: two It started out as the smallest baby bell but
Speaker 1: um but under the lead of a man named Ed
Speaker 1: Whittaker who had been working for Southwestern Bell all his life. Um,
Speaker 1: through through a whole lot of very savvy mechinations of
Speaker 1: his is to bring the company into all of this
Speaker 1: data in cable and et cetera stuff that A T
Speaker 1: and T was was trying to some very wise acquisitions
Speaker 1: and some very wise other Baby Bell acquisitions. Meeting, they
Speaker 1: become the largest baby Bell. Yeah, that decision that was
Speaker 1: handed down to divest A T and T of all
Speaker 1: these properties. Uh you know, the intent was to try
Speaker 1: and break up these monopolies. SBC had been growing year
Speaker 1: over year and acquiring some of those Bell operating carriers.
Speaker 1: Uh So, the while it avoided a monopoly with A
Speaker 1: T and T at that moment, it kind of ended
Speaker 1: up sort of creating at least, if not a monopoly,
Speaker 1: a mega company in SPC. And then in two thousand five, SBC,
Speaker 1: you know, plays the trump card by acquiring A T
Speaker 1: and T. So the the sub company has now become
Speaker 1: the parent company, although they then chose to change their
Speaker 1: name to A T and T. Right. Um, and this
Speaker 1: was only a sixteen billion dollar transaction. And I mean
Speaker 1: I feel very silly saying only next to sixteen billion,
Speaker 1: but considering what A T and T had been worth
Speaker 1: in the past, that was a pittance. I mean this,
Speaker 1: this was an indicator of how poorly the company was
Speaker 1: doing at the time. By the way, if you feel
Speaker 1: that I am worth only sixteen billion, I'll take it
Speaker 1: right now and do whatever podcast or not do whatever
Speaker 1: podcast you want me to, all right, So that's that's
Speaker 1: in fact, you know what I'm generous. You get two
Speaker 1: for one eight billion apiece. All right. So one of
Speaker 1: A T and T s former regional carriers acquired A
Speaker 1: T and T. That's the story here. It reunites those companies.
Speaker 1: So now we've got long distance and regional reunited formally,
Speaker 1: Keeping mind, A T. T had already gotten into regional
Speaker 1: calls again starting with that New York market, and uh
Speaker 1: SBC is now A T and T Incorporated, and the
Speaker 1: company owns around eleven of the twenty four Bell system companies. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, those regional operating carriers were of representative
Speaker 1: of larger buckets of companies, so twenty four total out
Speaker 1: of the you know that fell within the seven regional ones.
Speaker 1: A T T now has eleven of those twenty four backs.
Speaker 1: So it's not as big as it was before the
Speaker 1: judgment was handed down in that case. But it's it's big.
Speaker 1: It's big again. It's it actually kind of amazes me.
Speaker 1: I didn't come across anything. I didn't really dig deep enough,
Speaker 1: I think, but I didn't come across any news items
Speaker 1: about whether or not there was there were any alarms
Speaker 1: raised over the fact that SBC, a former you know,
Speaker 1: part of A T and T, was now going to
Speaker 1: acquire A T and T and therefore partially negate this judgment.
Speaker 1: I didn't see anything, but then I would imagine there
Speaker 1: had to have been some I imagine that they had
Speaker 1: their eye on the situation, and I mean they can't
Speaker 1: not have. I mean, the federal government is all up
Speaker 1: in a T T. S fries. Yeah, yeah, and especially recently.
Speaker 1: I mean it it's but it's kind of funny because
Speaker 1: we've had the story multiple times. We've done three podcasts
Speaker 1: about A T and T. And the story of A
Speaker 1: T T getting really big in the government stepping in
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, let's take a look at this, guys,
Speaker 1: has happened several times already. Uh don't know when we're
Speaker 1: gonna learn that lesson, I guess Anyway, let's let's move
Speaker 1: on to two thousand seven. Well, okay, what one more
Speaker 1: important point for two thou five, which is going to
Speaker 1: lead directly into two thousand and seven, is that around
Speaker 1: this time, Steve Jobs began working with Singular, which again
Speaker 1: um was part of SBC, to develop the iPhone and
Speaker 1: features specifically for it, right and then, And that that
Speaker 1: agreement included a five year exclusivity agreement, meaning that Singular
Speaker 1: would be the only carrier to carry the iPhone for
Speaker 1: five years, right and uh. In addition to that, like
Speaker 1: roughly ten percent of iPhone sales and stores a slice
Speaker 1: of Apple's iTunes revenue um and this was all for
Speaker 1: the development money that Singular Labs was providing. And also
Speaker 1: um for a for a new a new feature you're
Speaker 1: called visual Voicemail, which would become the consternation of many
Speaker 1: human people several years later, um and uh, and and
Speaker 1: revenue sharing agreement that would work out to about ten
Speaker 1: bucks a month for every iPhone customers a T and
Speaker 1: T or Singular at that time, bill Right, So then
Speaker 1: SPC acquires a T and T SBC becomes a T
Speaker 1: and T Incorporated, which means that the dealer becomes a
Speaker 1: T and T essentially again. So that means that the
Speaker 1: iPhone in two thousand seven, when it premiers and blows
Speaker 1: everybody away, Steve Jobs up there on that stage and
Speaker 1: showing off this gorgeous device that everyone didn't know they needed,
Speaker 1: and now we're convinced that absolutely they needed this right now.
Speaker 1: Gosh darn it would go exclusively in the United States
Speaker 1: to a T and T, which was a huge boon
Speaker 1: for them. I mean that it was you know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to really put into into words how influential the
Speaker 1: iPhone has been, because even if you don't own an iPhone,
Speaker 1: if you want a smartphone, the iPhone has influenced that
Speaker 1: design obviously. I mean a lot of the design elements
Speaker 1: that you see, while they may not be a you know,
Speaker 1: you might not say, oh they copied Apple. Maybe they
Speaker 1: went very much out of the way to not copy Apple,
Speaker 1: but that means that the Apple influenced them. So it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing stuff. And of course, I mean, I remember
Speaker 1: the craze that went out when the iPhone came out.
Speaker 1: Me I was like, I'm gonna wait a few more
Speaker 1: months because Android's coming, and uh, and so I did.
Speaker 1: I waited it out and got myself an Android phone.
Speaker 1: My wife has an iPhone and we fight. That's a
Speaker 1: different podcast. UM two seven was also the year that
Speaker 1: announced that that wireless services were going to be the
Speaker 1: main focus of the company, And I mean that was
Speaker 1: kind of obvious following their huge investment of the indianaphone.
Speaker 1: In hindsight, we can definitely say it's obvious, but keep
Speaker 1: in mind that before the iPhone, and while wireless was
Speaker 1: definitely becoming important because everyone was adopting cell phones, smartphones
Speaker 1: had not really taken off in the United States and
Speaker 1: the consumer market at all, and no one could have
Speaker 1: predicted how big they would become so shortly, right, so
Speaker 1: that that was a very wise kind of move on
Speaker 1: their part. You know, some people might say it was
Speaker 1: a little late on their part, but I think considering
Speaker 1: that there was no way of knowing at that time
Speaker 1: what was going to happen, it was it was the
Speaker 1: right move. And and you know, they would spend seventy
Speaker 1: billion on acquiring Spectrum and on building out wireless networks
Speaker 1: in the next three years alone, so they were pretty
Speaker 1: serious about it. Yeah, although if you lived in New
Speaker 1: York or San Francisco, you had a lot to say
Speaker 1: about that A T and T service in those early
Speaker 1: days on the iPhone. I don't live there, but since
Speaker 1: we work in technology and a lot of our peers
Speaker 1: work in San Francisco and New York, we were bombarded
Speaker 1: with complaints. Heard heard a bunch about that one. Um.
Speaker 1: Also in two thousand and seven, as a side note,
Speaker 1: at At At Whittaker announced his retirement from A T and T.
Speaker 1: He would go on to basically turn General General Motor
Speaker 1: Company around from its bankruptcy in two thousand nine. I
Speaker 1: always find it very admirable to see people who are
Speaker 1: just incredible leaders move on from one position to another,
Speaker 1: not even necessarily for for profit, but because they like
Speaker 1: the challenge of taking a company that's struggling perhaps or
Speaker 1: maybe just not performing up to expectations and really turning
Speaker 1: it around. I always find those stories interesting, especially I
Speaker 1: kind of I kind of want to look more into
Speaker 1: into this, into this dude, because he was you know,
Speaker 1: he started as an industrial engineer and and worked in
Speaker 1: engineering before he moved all the way up through the
Speaker 1: company to become its as CEO. That's also a phenomenal
Speaker 1: story because what we oo could and we hear all
Speaker 1: those stories about people who just come out of business
Speaker 1: schools and go into leadership roles without having actually worked
Speaker 1: in the rank and file of various companies. It's always
Speaker 1: fun to have. Maybe we'll put that analyticer down as
Speaker 1: a potential person to cover in a future episode. We're
Speaker 1: in the home stretch, about to finish out our three
Speaker 1: partner on A T and T. But first let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. Alright, So two thousand seven, we've got
Speaker 1: that A T and T with the iPhone. They have
Speaker 1: the exclusivity deal, which would not last uh five years.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be two thousand twelve before the iPhone was
Speaker 1: available on other carriers in the United States. It would
Speaker 1: actually be two thousand eleven. Do you have anything between
Speaker 1: twenty Alright, So nothing happened in two thousand eight nine
Speaker 1: or universe ceased to exist briefly. We all just took
Speaker 1: a break, you know, we're all you know, they're watching
Speaker 1: television or something. Two thousand eleven rolls around at A
Speaker 1: T and t s exclusive hold in the iPhone in
Speaker 1: the United States ends, uh, And also a T and
Speaker 1: T makes a move to acquire a rival cellular company,
Speaker 1: T Mobile. Yeah, and that one, in fact, would get
Speaker 1: the strong attention of the f c C. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice, as it turns out, and so
Speaker 1: so I remember hearing about that, and immediately my response
Speaker 1: was please, no, no, no, no, never. Why But as
Speaker 1: a T and T and T mobile, While you know,
Speaker 1: A T T is the second largest cellular service company
Speaker 1: in the United States, the first being Verizon, the third
Speaker 1: is Sprint, and the fourth is T Mobile. Now, a
Speaker 1: T and T and T Mobile both work on the
Speaker 1: same general technology for cellular service, whereas Verizon and Sprint
Speaker 1: work on the other one. So the one that a
Speaker 1: T and T and T mobile uses is the one
Speaker 1: that most of the world uses. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that means that while it looks like your choice is
Speaker 1: only going down from from one and four to one
Speaker 1: and three for the major carriers, keep in mind they're
Speaker 1: smaller carriers in the US. When the major carriers, your
Speaker 1: choices go down from one and four to one and three.
Speaker 1: In effect, it really meant that if you wanted that
Speaker 1: particular type of technology where you could theoretically be able
Speaker 1: to use your phone in other parts of the world
Speaker 1: depending on how your plan worked that out, Um, you
Speaker 1: only had one choice if A T and T were
Speaker 1: to acquire T Mobile at least one major choice that
Speaker 1: had a lot of support in the United States. So
Speaker 1: I was very much against it. I was not the
Speaker 1: only one. There were lots of people that were just
Speaker 1: leading the charge against this potential merger. A T and
Speaker 1: T and T Mobile would meet with the United States
Speaker 1: government multiple times to kind of give testimony as to
Speaker 1: why they thought this was a great idea. A T
Speaker 1: and T claimed that this would create thousands of new jobs,
Speaker 1: whereas the company, the organizations and parts of the government
Speaker 1: that were opposed to this said exactly the opposite that
Speaker 1: it was going to end up eliminating jobs, um particularly
Speaker 1: in various regions of the United States where they had
Speaker 1: major operating centers that they were afraid would shut down
Speaker 1: as a result of this this merger. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a big deal. The approximately thirty nine billion dollar deal.
Speaker 1: UH Sprint launched a project called No Takeover so Sprint
Speaker 1: Sprints like, you know, guys, I know we're not directly
Speaker 1: involved in this merger, but we would be directly affected
Speaker 1: by it. So that's why they launched a campaign to
Speaker 1: raise awareness and to to get some more traction against
Speaker 1: the move, and the U s Department of Justice and
Speaker 1: the FCC opposed the deal. A T and T would
Speaker 1: eventually withdraw the deal right around the end of twenty
Speaker 1: eleven the beginning of and the Department of Justice actually said,
Speaker 1: we feel the combination of A T and T and
Speaker 1: T Mobile would result in tens of millions of consumers
Speaker 1: facing higher prices, fewer choices, and low quality products for
Speaker 1: wireless services, which, uh, I think in the tech bis
Speaker 1: we call a sick burn. Uh. Yeah, So the merger
Speaker 1: does not go through, it it falls through. Now this
Speaker 1: was a big deal because we also were talking about
Speaker 1: T Mobile's parent company in dire financial straits and so,
Speaker 1: but T Mobile was operating independently pretty much already at
Speaker 1: that point anyway. It was just a question of who
Speaker 1: was going to buy it up or was it going
Speaker 1: to just continue to be um, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: a self sustaining entity. In two thousand and twelve, H
Speaker 1: A T. T gets sued again by the United States
Speaker 1: Department of Justice. The Department of Justice alleged that the
Speaker 1: carrier intentionally neglected to authenticate users of the IP relay service.
Speaker 1: That's a tool that was used by or it is
Speaker 1: used by people who have hearing impairment. Uh. The way
Speaker 1: it works as they can type in messages and a
Speaker 1: communications assistant reads the message out loud to a caller.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of a you know, it's a service
Speaker 1: so that someone who might be deaf or unable to
Speaker 1: communicate in a way that that most people could understand
Speaker 1: could contact a middle person who would relay the information. Well,
Speaker 1: the problem with this approach was that scammers were starting
Speaker 1: to use it as a means of getting getting around
Speaker 1: um write laws that that would prevent them, like they
Speaker 1: would end up like let's say you've heard, of course
Speaker 1: of the Nigerian scam. The idea of this person who
Speaker 1: is has shares your last name but does not have
Speaker 1: a direct relation to you, has died and there's all
Speaker 1: this money that I want to get out of the
Speaker 1: country and just for a small cut of the money,
Speaker 1: I will let you have the lion's share of it.
Speaker 1: I just need to transfer it, but but put forth
Speaker 1: a little bit first. Yeah, so that I can I
Speaker 1: can do the thing. It's all scam, right. So it
Speaker 1: turns out scammers were using the the IP relay service
Speaker 1: to try and target people, and so the f c
Speaker 1: c UH and the d o J both had kind
Speaker 1: of what A. T. T said, we're conflicting um directives
Speaker 1: because the f c C said, if you're a carrier,
Speaker 1: you have to support this service because otherwise you are
Speaker 1: not servicing the hearing impaired community. The Department of Justice said,
Speaker 1: you have to verify the identity of the people who
Speaker 1: want to use this service so that you aren't allowing
Speaker 1: scam artists to target victims. And A T and T said,
Speaker 1: what are we supposed to do. We're stuck in between
Speaker 1: these two directives where we have to give this, but
Speaker 1: we also have to do that, And Department of Justice
Speaker 1: was sent saying essentially, we don't buy it. You just
Speaker 1: have to figure out a way to verify this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta have a verification system. UM and
Speaker 1: from one, I haven't seen any resolution to that, so
Speaker 1: I don't know that that particular case may still be
Speaker 1: ongoing as of the recording of this podcast. If it
Speaker 1: has resolved, I could not find any information. That's one
Speaker 1: of the problems of following up on on reporting about
Speaker 1: these Yeah, you'll you'll hear about it when the lawsuit
Speaker 1: is leveled, But then there's not a lot of follow
Speaker 1: US resolutions to lawsuits are occasionally considered less news worthy.
Speaker 1: That's unfortunate. That same year, in two thousand twelve, A
Speaker 1: T and T made a hundred twenty six point four
Speaker 1: billion dollars in revenues. That's according to their two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve financial report, which I looked up just before we
Speaker 1: came in here. That was a two point four percent
Speaker 1: growth over two thousand eleven revenues. And in that same report,
Speaker 1: A T and T VP of Consumer Product Planning and
Speaker 1: Research said that A and T was looking at mobile payments,
Speaker 1: as in using your smartphone as your payment way, Like
Speaker 1: if you go to a restaurant, you tap your smartphone
Speaker 1: against that whole NFC wallet kind of stuff. I think
Speaker 1: that's great. I really look forward to the to being
Speaker 1: able to use my smartphone to pay for stuff as
Speaker 1: long as it's secure. But the biggest issue I have is,
Speaker 1: I mean beyond security, which clearly that needs to be
Speaker 1: number one, but number two is my concern that there
Speaker 1: are all these different systems that are being proposed that
Speaker 1: different companies are behind, Like Google has Google Wallet, A T.
Speaker 1: T has this other one, and then you've got these
Speaker 1: other companies that are looking at it too. If all
Speaker 1: of them are using proprietary language for their systems, that
Speaker 1: means that the merchants have to choose which system are
Speaker 1: they going to support, because you know, I doubt that
Speaker 1: most of them are going to have some sort of
Speaker 1: multiple support that would be expensive for them to be
Speaker 1: part of all these different programs. So a merchant has
Speaker 1: to make it kind of a decision like which one
Speaker 1: is likely to be the most popular, That's the one
Speaker 1: I'm going to support, Which means that as a consumer,
Speaker 1: your choices are limited. You may have no choice at all.
Speaker 1: You may have to use a specific type of phone
Speaker 1: if you want to take advantage of that kind of service.
Speaker 1: I don't like that. I like it when everybody is
Speaker 1: using using the same basic set of language, so that
Speaker 1: the merchant can have a single device and no matter
Speaker 1: what phone you use, you can use it as long
Speaker 1: as it's compatible with that device. I think that most
Speaker 1: m app creators these days realize the efficiency that the
Speaker 1: profit in making things available to multiple platforms, so or
Speaker 1: I guess multiple um devices right right. Yeah, It's just
Speaker 1: it's tough when the the service provider is also the
Speaker 1: one who creates the hardware as is the case. Well,
Speaker 1: A T and T does not directly create the hardware,
Speaker 1: but they create a layer of firmware and software that
Speaker 1: that hardware carries. So it definitely again, it's something to watch.
Speaker 1: Maybe a few years the Department Justice will step in
Speaker 1: and say, hey, I know that we keep talking to
Speaker 1: you guys, and I'm really sorry. I didn't bring this
Speaker 1: up last time, but we didn't know that it existed.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, we'll see if that happens. But there's also
Speaker 1: some other interesting stuff mentioned in that report that A
Speaker 1: T and T is working on stuff that I find
Speaker 1: really exciting. Again, the whole proprietary network stuff is that
Speaker 1: it could be an issue, but it's still exciting technologies
Speaker 1: like vehicle to vehicle communications. A T and T labs
Speaker 1: are looking into that vehicle to road communications. We've talked
Speaker 1: about that on tech stuff, We've talked about it on
Speaker 1: forward thinking. We you know the idea of having these
Speaker 1: communicating vehicles and communicating infrastructure. Yeah, A T and T
Speaker 1: is actually working with several auto manufacturers from A Tesla
Speaker 1: to BMW, Nissan and Ford um to to provide that
Speaker 1: Internet Internet connectivity to new automate automobiles. Yeah, which is fantastic.
Speaker 1: I mean when you think about it, that means that
Speaker 1: cars can communicate with one another, traffic can smooth out
Speaker 1: over time, you can have that sort of collision detection
Speaker 1: techno oology built in there. In other words, you can
Speaker 1: make driving safer, uh slightly more automated, not to the
Speaker 1: point where the car is taking over for you, but
Speaker 1: the car at least is able to alert you to
Speaker 1: things that otherwise you would not know or even help
Speaker 1: the the infrastructure, the traffic infrastructure respond to dynamic changes,
Speaker 1: so or to you know, just get just get the
Speaker 1: music that you want to listen to from Pandora, Spotify
Speaker 1: or something like that to play in your car. What
Speaker 1: I want I want them to develop a technology where
Speaker 1: when my car pulls up next to another car and
Speaker 1: I can see that the driver in that other car
Speaker 1: is really rocking out to something, but I can't hear it,
Speaker 1: I can find out what music they're listening to and
Speaker 1: then listen to that myself just to find out. You know,
Speaker 1: is that really worth it? They just could I rock
Speaker 1: out there? They would just they would just get J
Speaker 1: pop for me all the time. As you have revealed
Speaker 1: to everybody on Forward Taking. Speaking of Forward Thinking, if
Speaker 1: you are interested in automated automobiles, we just did a
Speaker 1: their episode on that, so that should be coming out soon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so definitely go check out that podcast. We have a
Speaker 1: lot of fun on that show. So if you enjoy
Speaker 1: tech stuff, I'm sure you would love Forward Thinking. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So does that brings us up? It does? Yes. That's
Speaker 1: when A T and T announced it would acquire Leap
Speaker 1: Wireless for one point two billion dollars. It's also when
Speaker 1: you Verse, which is a T and T S broadband
Speaker 1: television and internet service, had its first billion dollar revenue month,
Speaker 1: a billion dollars in one month I think. I think
Speaker 1: in two thousand and twelve. They made ten billion dollars
Speaker 1: over the course of the year, so one billion dollar
Speaker 1: month that that was. That's huge growth. That's that's pretty enormous.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, that's exciting for A T and T. Yeah.
Speaker 1: A T and T is currently because we are recording
Speaker 1: this podcast in October, they are currently the second largest
Speaker 1: wireless provider after Verizon Um. According to Forbes, one of
Speaker 1: A T and t s growing businesses is in providing
Speaker 1: data plans for tablet owner right, which is you know.
Speaker 1: That's they're just seeing that more and more tablet owners
Speaker 1: are are subscribing to these these data plans through a
Speaker 1: T and T, which is both good news and bad news.
Speaker 1: It's good news because it's a growing industry, it's a
Speaker 1: growing business, and it's growing market. The bad news is
Speaker 1: it's not as profitable as some of their other businesses.
Speaker 1: So while it's growing, it's not creating the same revenue
Speaker 1: generation as some of their other businesses. And that's also
Speaker 1: partially due to the fact that smaller wireless companies like
Speaker 1: T Mobile and Sprint are providing really steep competition through
Speaker 1: the price competitions. That remind me competition through competitions. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was very competitive pricing. I mean it's it's the
Speaker 1: kind of price wars that remind me of that long
Speaker 1: distance exactly. It's like like A T T had a
Speaker 1: quick uh head start with the iPhone and iPad stuff,
Speaker 1: and then uh, now the other companies, in order to
Speaker 1: make up for that that head start, have offered really
Speaker 1: competitive pricing, which means A T and T either has
Speaker 1: to follow suit or find some other way of making
Speaker 1: their service so attractive that the the higher prices feels
Speaker 1: worthwhile to the consumer right um. Also, just this month,
Speaker 1: the FCC adopted an agreement between A T and T
Speaker 1: Dish Network Corporation, and a bunch of other smaller wireless
Speaker 1: companies to help regulate more wireless bandwidths. And that's because
Speaker 1: A T and T currently owns a band of frequencies
Speaker 1: in in a one of those powerful signal like seven
Speaker 1: hurts kind of kind of bands, and their their concession
Speaker 1: to this plan will let smaller local providers get better
Speaker 1: access to the to the band, which should encourage manufacturers
Speaker 1: to make and sell more phones for that range and
Speaker 1: also give customers more options. And which wireless provider to adopttcha,
Speaker 1: So A T and T owns a band that's adjacent
Speaker 1: to this other one and it's sort of an interoperability
Speaker 1: kind of approach absolutely, And and addition, network is related
Speaker 1: to that because they are also trying to um decrease
Speaker 1: the strength of the signal that they are using in
Speaker 1: order to allow other carriers to horn in on it
Speaker 1: here and there. So I mean, this could be a
Speaker 1: deal that could work out really well for everyone, and
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. And that
Speaker 1: wraps up this classic episode of tech Stuff. Hope you
Speaker 1: guys enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions for topics
Speaker 1: I should cover on current episodes of tech Stuff, reach
Speaker 1: out to me on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff
Speaker 1: h s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Y text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For
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