Is it just me... AT&T?

Is it just me or are things out of control again?

When I was in college (1984) AT&T was considered a monopoly by the United States government. For the youngsters or folks outside of the USA in the reading audience: AT&T was the phone company and often was referred to as Ma Bell. The government took action and busted up AT&T for our benefit into the "baby bells". Huge amounts of cash was spent on this event.

Fast forward to 2005 and SBC Communications (a combination of Ameritech and several of the original baby bells) buys its former parent company AT&T for US$16 Billion . Fast forward to 2006 and AT&T is now prepared to buy BellSouth for US$67 Billion. Sixty-seven BILLION dollars? When the merger is complete it will mean almost half of the 24 baby bells will be back under the AT&T umbrella.

To add salt to the wound AT&T sold AT&T Wireless to Cingular Wireless, which happens to be owned by SBC Communications, which later bought AT&T. The other owner of Cingular Wireless is BellSouth soon to be part of AT&T. Another case of company cannibalism?

Where does all this money go??? Does this make them half of a monopoly again?

Is it just me...?