Big risks on occasion lead to big rewards....the "on occasion" piece is absolutely true at AT&T, this isn't the AT&T/Bell Labs you hear about in old TV documentaries that was the market leader and driving force behind how the world became a smaller place. Today it's bigger, more regulated than ever, and drags the weight of many legacy networks that it simply cannot get rid of. As a result, everything, even the smallest decisions, moves at a snail's pace with lengthy levels of review and approvals. Some of my colleagues who do not work for AT&T have often criticized AT&T for being representative of the traditional way of running a company....that AT&T isn't guided by investing in technology solutions and customers service itself, but rather in the shiny veneer of it's brand that you see in multimillion dollar sponsorships, government lobbying which will only increase as AT&T works for gain government approval on a potential merger with DirectTV. Perhaps this is a move for a big risk?...Hardly, the last merger attempt with T-Mobile which was shut down by the Dept of Justice resulted in a $4B penalty and AT&T posted a $6.7B loss for the failure in order to close the books on that big risk. Senior officer team is still the same... apparently you can take a loss like this and still keep your job at AT&T. That's how tight the bond is with most of the senior managers. Who knows...maybe this time it will be different....
