AT&F history

The company installed more than three million telephones in 1946.

1947: Microwave radio is adopted as the technological foundation of long-distance phone calls.

Bell Labs, one of the world’s foremost research centres, invented the transistor in 1948.

He got one in 1949 that helped AT&T sell more stock to raise needed capital.

In 1954, AT&T began offering telephones in colors other than black.

In 1955, AT&T laid the first transatlantic telephone cable, jointly owned with the British Post Office and the Canadian Overseas Telecommunications Corporation.

In a consent decree in 1956, AT&T agreed to limit its business to providing common-carrier services and to limit Western Electric's to providing equipment for the Bell System, except for government contracts.

1962: AT&T launches its first satellite named Telstar.

In 1964, the Transpacific cable service was started.

The project was more complicated than expected, and by the time the first electronic equipment was installed in 1965, AT&T had spent about $500 million on the project.

By 1966, AT&T had three million stockholders and nearly one million employees.

Kappel retired in 1967 and was replaced by H.I. Romnes, a former president of Western Electric.

The design later underwent several modifications until 1969, when Soul Bass created a new minimalist style—a blue bell in a white circle.

In 1974 the United States instituted a second antitrust suit for the dismemberment of the Bell System.

The last phones requiring operator assistance (“one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy”) are phased out in 1978.

Joining AT&T in 1981, Russo spent the next decade in marketing, human resources, operations, and strategic planning.

In January 1982, AT&T and the DOJ jointly announced a deal to break up the Bell System, while freeing the remainder of AT&T to compete in non-long-distance areas such as computers.

In 1984, the former AT&T agreed to divest its local telephone operations but retain its long distance, R&D and manufacturing arms.

James E. Olson became president of AT&T in 1985, cutting 24,000 jobs from the information division later that year to improve its profits.

In 1986, Olson became chairman, and Robert E. Allen became president.

In 1987, the DOJ recommended that the regional operating companies be allowed to compete with AT&T in long distance and telecommunications equipment manufacturing--its two core businesses.

Olson died in 1988, and Allen became chairman.

She completed Harvard University’s rigorous Advanced Management Program in 1989, and three years later AT&T chose her to restructure its faltering Business Communications Systems division as its president.

In mid-1990, AT&T raised its long-distance rates after low second-quarter earnings.

Wall Street analysts, however, expected the credit card's startup costs to hold back AT&T earnings until at least 1992.

1993: AT&T acquires McCaw Cellular Communications for $12.8 billion, entering the cellular phone business as a result.

In 1994 AT&T purchased McCaw Cellular Communications Inc., the nation’s largest provider of cellular telephone service.

On September 20, 1995, the company announced it was splitting up yet again, this time into three separate entities.

Following Congress’s 1996 deregulation of the telecommunications industry, AT&T acquires the nation’s No.

1999: AT&T purchases cable television heavyweight, Tele-Communications, for $53.5 billion.

In 2000, AT&T announced that it’d restructured into a group of four separately run entities for its business, consumer, wireless, and broadband services.

2001: Comcast purchases AT&T Broadband in a $72 billion deal.

As business dried up and layoffs and financial losses persisted, the chances of Lucent’s recovery seemed slim, but Russo boldly promised to return the company to profitability before the end of 2003.

In July 2004, the company announced it would stop courting residential customers and instead focus its future on its business services segment.

In 2005, following the merger between AT&T and SBC, the logo received a voluminous impression to symbolize AT&T’s expanding variety of services.

The acquisition of BellSouth in 2006 consolidated ownership of Cingular Wireless.

In July 2009 Russo was appointed to the board of directors of General Motors.

In September 2013, the company announced it would expand into Latin America through a collaboration with Carlos Slim’s America Movil.

On May 18, 2014, AT&T announced it had agreed to purchase DirecTV. In the deal, which has been approved by boards of both companies, DirecTV stockholders will receive $95 a share in cash and stock, valuing the deal at $48.5 billion.

And our 2015 acquisition of DIRECTV makes us the world's largest pay TV provider.