Word: sbc
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...raising their dividend and have demonstrated the willingness," says Deborah Kuenstner, head of value investing at Putnam Investments. Her picks include power companies Entergy and Florida Power, oil company ExxonMobil and consumer-products maker Procter & Gamble. Other analysts like drugs (Pfizer, Wyeth), financials (AIG FleetBoston) and phones (Verizon, SBC). Proven funds that target dividends: T. Rowe Price Dividend Growth and Capital Income Builder...
Then Harpest saw a couple of SBC ads telling customers that switching to the new local services offered by the likes of AT&T was as foolish as poking a fork into a toaster or sticking your tongue to a metal pole in freezing weather. Far from amused, Harpest thought the ad could "give kids bad ideas." But it gave him a good idea. He called AT&T, already his long-distance provider, to sign up for its local service, seeking only the convenience of a single bill. He was surprised to learn the switch would also save him about...
...long years after the Telecommunications Act was supposed to help break the Baby Bells' hammerlock on local phone service, competition in the residential market is finally starting to heat up--and the Bells' once dependable growth is cooling down. Thanks to newly aggressive state regulators who are forcing BellSouth, SBC Communications, Verizon and the much smaller Qwest to lease their networks to competitors at lower prices, rivals like AT&T and MCI are for the first time snapping up some of the most lucrative customers. "Now we have a real fight," says former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Reed Hundt...
...makes no economic sense for the competitors to invest capital at these prices," says Randall Stephenson, chief financial officer of SBC Communications. "We still maintain the network and provision it, and the cost structure doesn't change. From a financial perspective, the model is unsustainable." As long as they are subsidizing their rivals, the Bells insist, there's no reason for them to upgrade their networks, which puts a further drain on the depressed equipment sector, including companies like Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks...
Echoing most telecom-industry analysts, Powell has made clear that he thinks that the industry may well need another round of consolidation to get back on sound footing--whether that means SBC and BellSouth or Verizon and Qwest joining forces, the Bells snapping up their newfound competitors at AT&T and MCI, or some of the six major wireless carriers finding strength in numbers. But, as Gene Kimmelman, co-director of the Washington office of Consumers Union, points out, "If Powell goes too hard too fast, he could end up with egg all over his face, with a more monopolistic...