WESTERN
ELECTRIC
TELEPHONES
(schematics, color charts, posters, etc.)

Bell Operating Companies
SBC (AT&T)

 

Well, it looks like SBC has bought its original parent company, AT&T, and changed its name to at&t (note the lower-case initials) and has become, once again, the largest telecommunications company in the USA.  To learn more about this latest milestone in the history of what was use to be Southwestern Bell and American Telephone and Telegraph, go to the following link:

http://www.thenewatt.com/

Let's look back at the recent history of SBC . . .

Name change as easy as SBC
Bell label jettisoned to unify company's identity for consumers

12/11/2002

By VIKAS BAJAJ / The Dallas Morning News

The Southwestern Bell brand died Tuesday. It was 82.

It will be joined in the afterlife by its sisters Pacific Bell, 122, and Ameritech, 9.

The phone companies will now simply be SBC, letters that once stood for Southwestern Bell Corp. But no longer.

San Antonio-based telecom giant SBC Communications, which owns the three companies, said it's adopting a national brand name across its 13-state local-phone operations to unify its image. It's following the lead of other Baby Bells such as the former Bell Atlantic, which is now Verizon Communications.

"It's the spreading of the corporate DNA," said A. Michael Noll, a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications.

The change will strip the historic "Bell" moniker from all but two members of the Bell family. Only BellSouth and Cincinnati Bell use the term.

The company has planned the change for three years. Phone bills were changed effective Tuesday, and many of the company's buildings and trucks have sported the SBC name and logo for some time, said spokesman Larry Solomon.

"The heritage will remain," Mr. Solomon said. "The legacy will remain. It's simply a new name."

With one exception: Fulfilling a promise to state regulators, SBC's Connecticut operations will continue to use the name SBC SNET, which previously stood for Southern New England Telecommunications.

Mr. Solomon wouldn't say how much the rebranding will cost. Customer awareness of the SBC name is already high, particularly in California and the Midwest, where its acquisition and integration of Pacific Bell and Ameritech have garnered significant media coverage.

The Southwestern Bell brand was adopted for AT&T's local operations in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas in April 1920. Seven years ago, Southwestern Bell Corp. changed to SBC Communications.

The Pacific Bell name was first used in 1880 and was discontinued in 1889, when the West Coast company changed its name to Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Co. It was brought back in 1984 by Pacific Telesis, the Baby Bell that also owned Nevada Bell. In 1997, SBC bought Pacific Telesis.

In the Midwest, five separate brands – Illinois Bell, Indiana Bell, Michigan Bell, Ohio Bell and Wisconsin Bell – prevailed until April 1993, when parent Ameritech imposed its single brand. SBC bought Ameritech in 1999.

Even though some phone company names have been around for decades, many have gone through several rounds of changes, said Herb Hackenburg, executive director of the Telephone History Group in Denver. American Telephone & Telegraph (1885), for example, is now simply AT&T.

"There are a lot of precedents for gobbling up telephone companies," he said. "Northwestern Bell gobbled up over 400 telephone companies, including some relatively large companies like Nebraska Bell."

In 1984, Northwestern Bell became part of US West, which was bought by Qwest Communications International in June 2000.

Name changes over the last few years have been driven by companies' desire to establish national and global identities. When Bell Atlantic and Irving-based GTE Corp. merged in June 2000, they chose to craft an entirely new word – Verizon.

Until recently, SBC was content with letting its acquired operations retain their own identities. But it imposed the corporate image in September 2001 by forcing local brands to add the SBC prefix to their names, ala SBC Southwestern Bell.

Experts say its latest move is a logical extension as the company increasingly goes up against who else but the Bell family matriarch, AT&T.

Changing the name will make it easier for SBC to compete nationally with AT&T for business customers, said Courtney Quinn, a senior analyst with the Yankee Group, a Boston consulting firm.

The new name is also a way to tell consumers the company doesn't sell only plain old telephone service.

"It's a much broader promise of access and connectivity and control, to some degree, over your life," said Julie Cottineau, managing director of naming for Interbrand, a consulting firm.

"The burden is now on the company's to imbue this empty vessel with meaning," Ms. Cottineau said.

What about the last keepers of the "Bell" heritage? How long will they hold out?

"It's our position that the name Cincinnati Bell has tremendous value," said spokeswoman Jenny Kues.

Said BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher: "The company loves the Bell name. We have absolutely no plans to change it."

E-mail vbajaj@dallasnews.com

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