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June 2005
TelCo
Retirees Association, Inc.
June 1, 2005
Subject:
The sad demise of a friend - AT&T
Death Of A Friend - From an Orlando Newspaper.
The oldest, most trusted friend of my professional life
is dying. I feel lost already. She is my longest-running colleague,
the only companion who has traveled with me every mile of my career.
She got me out of more jams than I can count and helped me beat unforgiving
deadlines from Tallahassee to Tokyo; Memphis to Monte Carlo; South
Bend to South Korea; Suwanee, Ga., to Stockholm, Sweden; Melbourne,
Fla., to Melbourne, Australia; Oxford, Miss., to Oxford, England.
The only variables were whether I could get to a place, then report
a story fast enough. She always handled the rest. If I couldn't get
there fast enough, she always made sure I was in immediate touch with
the key players in a story.
She always kept me in close contact with home and family, wherever
I was. When my infant son first was able to sit up on his own, she
let me know within minutes -- and I was on the other side of the planet.
The flip side was, whenever an editor wanted to growl at me or give
me an order, from 10 miles or 10,000 miles away, she let it happen
almost instantaneously.
She was, for all of the 20th century, the very spinal cord of sports
journalism, and indeed all journalism, in this country and around
the world.
Even before I got a job, or even went to college, I was her dependent.
She announced my birth to the world -- well, actually to the handful
of relatives and family friends who were interested. And for most
of my life, I fully expected her to announce my death to whoever might
care.
She gave me my first real-time contact with sports, bringing me baseball
from faraway Yankee Stadium, and the Ole Miss Rebels from Baton Rouge,
La., 150 miles distant.
Radio and TV stations in those days received remote programming via
telephone lines. Thus the origin of the word, "network."
In her prime, we grumbled about her, like all normal children do about
all good mothers. When we were young, we called her Ma Bell. The term
seems sexist now, but I draw license from historical fact to use it
here, along with the feminine pronouns.
To be sure, there already are myriad surrogates for her. But none
can replace her, down deep in my whole sense of security.
She is dying at the age of 130. She was birthed in 1875 by Alexander
Graham Bell. Her full name is long forgotten by the masses: the American
Telephone & Telegraph Company. Only barely does youth recognize
her initials, AT&T.
Time was when she was the only phone company, local or long distance.
Even her hardware was made in-house; all quality telephone sets were
made by Western Electric, a subsidiary of what legions of absolutely
loyal employees called "The System," in the reverent tones
of patriots speaking of early America.
She was the absolute monarch of communications, but benign.
She was badly injured 21 years ago -- federal lawsuits tore her asunder,
into the "Baby Bells" -- Bell South, Pacific Bell, etc.
-- but allowed to keep her long-distance empire.
"Sometimes," a wise man named Richard Petty once told me,
"monopolies are a good thing -- the best thing, for certain situations."
He was talking about tire wars in NASCAR among manufacturers, and
how rushed production often ended in injury or death to drivers. For
the sake of uniformity and safety, one company, he said, must be the
exclusive provider.
He said that circa 1988, and even then I thought immediately of Ma
Bell, for the ramifications of her dismemberment already were beginning
to set in on society.
A fledgling company called MCI sued AT&T, demanding the right
to rent long-distance lines, and along came another attacker named
Sprint, and before long, Ma Bell's illness was terminal, though we
didn't know it then.
Still, businesses and individuals who absolutely, positively, had
to have completely reliable telecommunications stayed unflinchingly
with AT&T. This category certainly included newspapers and magazines.
Only once in the 20th century did a publication where I worked switch
to another long-distance carrier, supposedly to save money. It was
such a disaster that every traveling reporter on the staff revolted.
The return
to AT&T came too late. The publication folded.
Since then, I can't tell you how many hundred telemarketers from Whizbang
Supersaver Local Family & Global Networking, with rates of one
cent per year, I've cut off in mid-sentence:
"Hold it! Stop! Before you say another word, let me tell you
that the telephone is as vital to my being as brainwaves, and therefore
I am an AT&T customer till the day I die. Period."
It won't turn out that way now.
The wolfpacks of hyper-ambitious companies kept coming. But from the
boondocks of Darlington, S.C., to midtown Manhattan, you could bypass
any hotel's cheapo long-distance carrier with the magic touch of 1-800-CALLATT.
At the advent of the cellular phone, I messed around with several
ding-a-ling carriers until AT&T Wireless emerged. I jumped on
it before I realized that poor Ma Bell, in her pressing poverty, had
sold her very name to someone else. Still it worked, continent-wide
better than anything else. Now that company has been bought by some
swirling conglomerate of carriers I found inept in the past. I fear
the worst.
Of course, you know what happened to the original invader, MCI. It
became part of WorldCom, which ended up in the most scandalous corporate
collapse in history, gutting the retirement security of multitudes.
It returned to the name MCI and now is at the brink of being absorbed
by
Sprint. So goes the sea of electronic sharks.
The land lines I use remain AT&T, but a few months ago came word
that she no longer would seek new long distance customers, so you
knew the end was near.
Then last week, some company called SBC -- based, wouldn't you know
it, in that corporate free-for-all called Texas -- announced plans
to take over AT&T entirely.
Apparently they'll continue to use the AT&T brand. But that's
about like expecting Napoleon III to be as strong as Napoleon Bonaparte.
I've done fairly well with this whole notion of future shock. I've
gone in my time from upright manual typewriters to notebook computers;
from dignified air travel to today's subways of the skies; from candid,
one-on-one interviews to staged, mass news conferences with fabricated,
manipulated, artificial images of sports people.
I have withstood all that, but this .this . . .
I am lost already -- heartsick in a way no other future shock has
rendered me. This is a death in every American family.
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