In January 1982, the US Government broke up AT&T to 7 companies with AT&T allowed to keep parts. By 1996 the S&P 500 telecommunications services was created and contained 14 companies. With mergers, the 2017 index has 3 Companies left in it AT&T, Verizon and Century Link.

BellSouth and AT&T merged. SBC Communications first bought Pacific Telesis, then Ameritech, it joined BellSouth to buy AT&T Wireless and then bought AT&T, however it took the name of AT&T.

Bell Atlantic bought NYNEX, then bought GTE and changed its name to Verizon. Since then it has acquired the wireless assets of Alltel.

US West bought QWest and after a merger with Century Telephone changed its name to CenturyLink.

Airtouch Communication was bought by Vodafone.

MCI and WorldCom merged then collapsed under accounting scandals.

Sprint merged with Nextel and was bought by Japan’s Softbank and left the index.

Frontier bought Global Crossing and Citizens Communication but has since left the index because of revenue problems.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, when AT&T was broken up, it was good for the economy because they had a monopoly on local phone service and did it well. If it had not broken up we might not have seen the rise of the cellphone and all the services which go into it as fast as it changing now. Along the way, with different demands and needs of services companies have changed, some are better than they were.  The point is when the Baby Bells were broken off who would have known only a few names would remain in the future.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.