The new, new, new AT&T

This afternoon I caught up with the local arm of arguably the world's largest telco, AT&T.

Hold on, you say -- didn't the American government break up AT&T back in the 1980s in an attempt to promote competition in the country's telecommunications sector?

Yes, yes it did. However, as American comedian Stephen Colbert points out in an amusing video clip (below) screened by AT&T at today's briefing, the telco is like the T1000 in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

"No matter how many pieces you break it into, it always comes back together," says Colbert.

"As you no doubt remember, Cingular was co-owned by BellSouth and SBC, which had been SouthWestern Bell and Ameritech, which before that had been Illinois Bell, Wisconsin Bell, Michigan Bell, Ohio Bell, and Indiana Bell."

"All of those used to be AT&T," he adds.

"A couple of years ago Cingular bought AT&T Wireless and renamed it Cingular, but then SBC bought AT&T and changed its own name to AT&T. Then that new AT&T bought BellSouth, changing its name to AT&T, making it only logical to change Cingular into AT&T."

Sidenote: why could I find this video on Google Video but not on YouTube? Aren't they owned by the same company? Oh well...