Era Ending for AT&T

Joseph Laszlo | July 22, 2004, 03:41 PM

As we all go on about our busy days today, I think it's important to take a moment of silence to contemplate the passing on of one of the great consumer brands/services of our time, as AT&T stops actively marketing its consumer long distance and local businesses.

...

Yep.

Ok.

So, what's AT&T got left? Well, the enterprise voice and data businesses. Very competitive, but AT&T is perhaps the biggest and best brand there.

Worldnet. Which I think is still probably one of the ten largest consumer ISPs in the US, though we don't count them because AT&T won't exactly say how many subs it has.

A nascent MVNO, once the ATT Wireless/Cingular deal closes.

CallVantage (broadband telephony, local and long distance).

AT&T is still, for many ordinary folks over a certain age, the phone company. I was talking with a journalist about voice over IP efforts from various providers the other day, and they were mildly surprised at first by the notion of putting Vonage and AT&T in the same category (broadband telephony providers that don't control the underlying Internet connectivity).

But consumers are finding it makes less and less sense to get local and LD from different companies. And given few ways for someone like AT&T to offer local voice profitably, the consumer side of AT&T's business is going to have to look more like Vonage than like the old AT&T.