AT&T Inc. was founded in 1983 as Southwestern Bell Corporation, headquartered in Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, and told the FCC that it would allow competitors access to local markets where it had had a monopoly if the FCC would allow them to acquire Ameritech. The FCC agreed and in May 1998, SBC and Ameritech announced the merger would move forward.
After making several organizational changes (such as the sale of Ameritech Wireless to GTE) to satisfy state and Federal regulators, the two merged. The FCC later fined SBC Communications $6 million for failure to comply with agreements made in order to secure approval of the merger.
Bell Pacific Telesis, the Regional Bell operating company serving Nevada and California, in 1997 and the former independent Bell System franchise SNET (Southern New England Telephone).
The company - a holding company for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company was incorporated by AT&T Corporation as a result of U.S. antitrust action against their company in 1983. It took full control of Southwestern Bell Telephone.
St. Louis, Missouri. It was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating Companies, or "Baby Bells".
In 1993, Southwestern Bell Corp. moved its headquarters to San Antonio, Texas, and, during its annual meeting of stockholders in 1995, the company announced that its name would be changed to SBC Communications, Inc. The name change was an effort to reinforce the company's national and global reach and the company stated not only that "SBC" was not an acronym for Southwestern Bell Corporation but also that it did not stand for anything at all.
SBC then proceeded (as permitted by the Telecommunications Act of 1996) to acquire fellow Baby.
SBC then announced plans to acquire Ameritech, the Regional Bell operating company serving Illinois, Indiana.
In 2002, SBC ended marketing its operating companies under different names, and simply opted to give its companies different doing business as names based on the state (a practice already in use by Ameritech since 1993), and it gave the holding companies it had purchased d/b/a names based on their general region.
