They bought out AT&T and took the name. Remember when Cingular bought AT&T Wireless? Cingular paid CASH. So it's really the business of SBC/Cingular merged together and simply added AT&T's customers into their system. Hence the horrendous PR from customer service because of all the system screw-ups over those couple of months.

They keep on referring to ATT. Its att.

Whats the difference ATT was the company that got broken up. att is SBC re branded after they bought what was left of ATT. att wireless is really singular re branded. Thats why on some commercials you will see it as the new att

SBC bought AT&T, and changed their name to AT&T. SBC owns Cingular, so they changed it's name to AT&T.

AT&T had spun off their wireless division, and Cingular bought it 2-3 years ago.

A modem test command. Not much more.

Here on the west coast of the USA (aka "left" coast), it WAS "Pacific Telephone", part of the original AT&T. Then came 1984. Became "Pacific Bell". Got a baseball park named after it. Then bought out by SBC (aka "some big company"). Renamed the ball park. Then they bought (what was left of) AT&T, the old long distance company. Took on the name.

Of the "Baby Bells" (NYNEX, Bell Atlantic, Bell South, Southwestern Bell Company, Ameritech, US West, Pacific Telesis), 4 are now under the new AT&T umbrella. Two (NYNEX, and Bell Atlantic) along with GTE (Great Telephone Experiment) now are Verizon. The only thing left is US West, now "Qwest communications". Who knows if/when it will be swallowed up (but it does have the largest (area) territory).

So concludes our telephone history lesson for today. See how well anti-trust breakups work!

It's been over 100 now. Remember, SBC, Bell South, Qwest, Verizon were all AT&T back in the eighties, so the new AT&T, is really just parts of the same company reassembled. Also, AT&T is always capitalized, unless used with their logo. That's the correct spelling.