AT&T we have now is not really related to this old evil AT&T. Actual company that uses this brand in mobile space is used to be called Cingular. They bought AT&T remains and promptly rebranded.
> AT&T we have now is not really related to this old evil AT&T.
Yes, it is.
> Actual company that uses this brand in mobile space is used to be called Cingular.
So, in the beginning there was AT&T, the telephone monopoly.
It was broken up into 7 RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies, also called “baby bells”) providing local service (each of which got a corresponding chunk of the AT&T subsidiary doing mobile work as their own mobile subsidiary), and the reduced AT&T, which did long distance, and some other things. There were also two other local service providers (which, before the divestiture, weren’t AT&T subsidiaries but did partial AT&T control.)
The modern AT&T is the result of mergers of, among other things, the long-distance AT&T and 4 of the 7 baby bells. As part of the road to getting there, Cingular Wireless, which was formed as joint venture of two of the Baby Bells (SBC, which had already acquired Pacific Telesis, one of the other Baby Bells, and BellSouth) from their mobile units and other mobile and other firms (like, more than 100 in total), acquired AT&T Wireless (not AT&T), which became part of Cingular (which was still an SBC/BellSouth joint venture)
Then AT&T merged with SBC, making Cingular an AT&T/BellSouth joint venture. Then it was announced that the AT&T brand would be used for Cingular service when packaged with AT&T services. Then AT&T bought BellSouth, making Cingular an AT&T/AT&T joint venture…or, rather, just part of AT&T.
So AT&T is the old long-distance AT&T after eating a bunch of other companies, but it’s also a very large portion of the older monopoly AT&T. Part of the wireless business was Cingular for a while between being AT&T before and then being AT&T again. (This leaves out a lot of mergers that went into forming the current AT&T that are not related to the claim that some company called Cingular that was completely unrelated to the old AT&T bought some minor remnant of AT&T and clothed itself with the name.)
Verizon (originally Bell Atlantic)'s history is much the same. There's even some back and forth between it and what is now AT&T over who gets what of the RBOCs and their spinoffs/successors.
Now, if Verizon and AT&T merge, then Ma Bell really will be back.
