AT&T Inc., formerly American Telephone and Telegraph Co., U.S. telecommunications corporation. It was established as a subsidiary of Bell Telephone Co. (founded by Alexander Graham Bell in 1877) to build long-distance telephone lines and later became the parent company of the Bell System. In the early 20th century it gained a virtual monopoly over the U.S. telecommunications industry, and by 1970 it was the world’s largest corporation. It developed transoceanic radiotelephone links and telephone cable systems and created the Telstar satellite communications system. Years of federal antitrust litigation resulted in 1984 in the divestment by AT&T (nicknamed “Ma Bell”) of its 22 regional telephone companies, which were combined to form seven “Baby Bells”: Nynex, Bell Atlantic, Ameritech, BellSouth, Southwestern Bell Corp. (renamed SBC Corp. in 1995), US West, and Pacific Telesis Group. Although several Baby Bells merged following the Telecommunications Act of 1996, AT&T proceeded to divide its operations into three separate companies: AT&T Corp., Lucent Technologies Inc. (composed of the former operations of Western Electric and Bell Laboratories), and the NCR Corp. In 2005 AT&T was acquired by SBC Corp., which then changed its name to AT&T Inc. Its diversified telecommunications businesses included local and long-distance telephone service, wireless voice and data networks, broadband DSL (Digital Subscriber Line), and Internet communication and Web management services.
