Originally, there was one — AT&T, f.k.a American Telephone and Telegraph. Then, in 1984 (somewhat ironically), the split of Ma Bell into its regional components completed. AT&T gave birth to seven regional Bell companies. 22 years after the break up of telephony’s “natural monopoly” and ten years after the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, we are now down to three companies: AT&T/SBC, Verizon, and Qwest. That assumes that the recently proposed merger of AT&T and BellSouth goes through as expected. It appears that Ma Bell is recoalescing back into its former self. This is all in an effort to be a leader in offering the key three-member combination of services: telephone, Internet, and television. This merger will not only bring Cingular Wireless under one corporate roof, but the merger will also further propel the company’s roll out of IPTV and FTTP.
It seems to me what we’re moving into a world with two main choices in what I call “content services.” The first is picking one company to provide everything you need. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Adelphia, etc. all want to give you everything including the ktichen sink. A single bill and discounted service are two big advantages that such a scheme provides. However, are you going to get the best services from such content service conglomerations? Other companies providing a single service want to make sure that doesn’t become the case. DirecTV, Dish Network, Vonage, Skype, T-Mobile and others want you to use their services, which are better than the big corporations’ since they only do one thing. Somewhat counterintuitively, these individual services are actually cheaper than their counterparts offered by the huge conglomerates.
Only time will tell whether the one-stop shop or the niche companies will win in the oncoming battle over content services.