Traditional phone companies facing increasing competition from cable giants like Time Warner are rapidly embracing Internet-based telephone service. Many experts believe the new technology - which is ...

On one hand, you could say that the American telecommunications industry has come full circle. In the old days, you had THE phone company, AT&T, also known as Ma Bell. In 1984, Ma Bell was broken up ...

Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell, by Phil Lapsley, Grove Press, 431 pages, $26. During the Cold War, a shadowy group hacked its way into a system ...

“Communism,” comedian Lenny Bruce once quipped, “is like one big phone company.” This dated joke refers to the monolithic phone company known as “Ma Bell,” which enjoyed a government-granted monopoly ...

Only a few years ago, it would have been considered the deal of the century. In 1997, then-FCC chairman Reed Hundt called it "unthinkable." While the acquisition was extensively reported in the media, ...

Imagine a day when it cost an arm and a leg to use the phone, especially for long-distance calls. Then imagine that buried deep within the telephone network infrastructure was a flaw -- a hole that ...

From an unpretentious Manhattan headquarters, the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. runs a prodigious organization. The Bell System operates more than half of the world’s 208 million phones, reaps ...

In his March 21 letter [“Local Phone Service Competition in Jeopardy,” Voice of the People], Michael W. Ward misses the mark when he writes that AT&T’s proposed merger with BellSouth is a “disturbing ...

When Edward Whitacre was plotting last year to take over AT&T, the rumour in Washington was that the chief executive of what was then still called SBC had an audacious plan: his Texas telecoms company ...

With the FCC having cleared the regulatory passageway for the AT&T and BellSouth merger, we’re even closer to having Ma Bell put back together again. And for those of us who were around in 1984, it ...

When it comes to confrontations with Big Business, Washington is scarcely shy. Yet last week, marshaling a full-time staff of 20 to do battle against the U.S.’s biggest utility, the Federal ...