For over four decades, BTI has helped businesses maximize the value of their telecom and technology investments, from the days of payphones and rotary lines to digital transformation and today’s cloud-driven, AI-enabled world. Along the way, AT&T has been a partner, supplier, and competitor in often ironic ways. Like AT&T has occasionally tried to do, for 40 years, BTI has worked diligently to meet commercial clients’ technology integration and support requirements.
What was interesting about competing with AT&T was that the company was always changing strategy and pricing but never to meet actual market demands. Rather, they were managing the quarterly top line numbers for Wall Street and padding expenses and hiding profits from the regulators. There was nothing “market-based” about it, referring to Stankey’s letter suggesting a shift to “market-based” behavior.
My own history of competing with AT&T is why all the reporting about the AT&T layoffs and the Stankey memo caught my attention. In it, he told employees that lifetime job security and tenure-based promotions are no longer the norm since the company is shifting to “market-based” practices. Instead, the incentive for employee commitment is continued employment, and in his words, “If you dislike change, you’re going to dislike irrelevance even more.”
It’s a blunt message for AT&T employees, surely designed to get as many to quit as possible. But what stood out was what the letter didn’t say:
“What, exactly, is AT&T changing to become “market-based?” AT&T’s Roots Are in Regulatory Capture from The Start – Customer Value Isn’t A Concern “
AT&T wasn’t built for competition; it was built for ensured monopolistic control of its territory and political and balance sheet gerrymandering to protect and hide its enormous profits. From the early days under Theodore Vail to decades as a regulated monopoly/public utility, the company focused on controlling the market through policy and infrastructure rules. This approach shaped regulations to limit competition and guaranteed profits based on costs, often rewarding operational bloat rather than efficiency.
Up until the 1968 Carterfone ruling by the US Supreme Court, AT&T had regulators convinced that anyone plugging any device at all into a phone line would irreparably harm national security and the network. The result, prior to 1968, was that in America, it was a crime to own your own phone – everyone had to rent one for their home or business from AT&T forever.
From 1968 until 1984, AT&T funneled so much monopoly profit through Bell Labs that they were the biggest worldwide patent holders of super advanced technology, the developers of the world’s fastest computers, and the owners of more advanced technology than any other company on earth.
Many argued that the only reason why AT&T finally entered into the 1984 consent decree was that as part of it was that management believed that somehow they could overtake IBM and all other worldwide information system companies very quickly and easily due to their advanced development. Make no mistake, at that time, AT&T was still able to get whatever it wanted and to forestall and control the entire market, including the government, because it had a lockdown on US communications networks.
So, in many ways, the 1984 consent decree was a diversion. The resulting skyrocketing costs and reacquisitions afterward by SBC which then changed their name back to AT&T, were the butt of jokes for comics like Lilly Tomlin and SNL before and after. Over the next 26 years, AT&T and its baby bells successfully recombined and then stifled competition and imposed predatory pricing and regulation on competitors, rather than focus on the customer at all.
An awful example of regulatory capture was when the FCC Chairman, Colin Powell’s son, wrote the first in history “dissenting opinion” on an administrative matter and subsequently refused to enforce the Telecom Reform Act of 1996 despite the agency’s ruling that it needed enforcement and the lack of power under the Constitution to make that decision.
Hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost, and everyone’s phone bill went up. AT&T needed to do a lot of lobbying and politicking to make it that way. As a monopoly, they got to pass on those costs plus their markup on the costs and the hidden R&D to you, the consumer. Make no mistake, big pharma is bad, but AT&T is the OG.
The stroke of Powell’s bloody pen meant immediate liquidation and forced sale of all of AT&T’s land line competitors at that time and the reestablishment of their territorial network monopoly. Some of the world’s most valuable companies at that time were forced into bankruptcy. If you ever wondered what happened to all those telecom companies that led the market in the 1990s, there’s your answer. It wasn’t the dot com bust, it was AT&T controlling the regulators and rewriting the rules again. Even twenty years later, the United States has the most expensive and slowest internet connections among any developed country in the world.
100 plus years of this type of monopoly behavior isn’t easily undone. It’s still evident in the pricing, service, delivery, communication, processes, billing, and overall customer experience businesses report when working with the former monopoly portions of AT&T. It will take drastic measures to root out of existence the culture of “take it or leave it, we don’t care” that Lilly Tomlin joked about years ago. For AT&T, changing to “Market-Based” means changing 120,000 employees’ minds and attitudes – not an easy task.
Non “Market Based” behavior that AT&T is moving away from includes:
- Customer choice is nonexistent: In the past, if you want high speed commercial service, AT&T or some part of its network was your only option; today not so any more.
- Service contracts are one-sided: The customer’s role was simply to pay the bill and follow the rules forever.
- Innovation moves slowly: There was little incentive to adopt new technology quickly when there was no competition to fear.
- Anyone Gets in Our Way, We regulate them Out of Existence or Buy Them: The era of deregulation is upon us. It’s not lost on me that this memo and this decision didn’t happen under Trump’s first term when he hired the establishment cabinet and then didn’t happen under Biden (of course not) and is only happening now, 200 days into Trump’s first real term in control of deregulation.
The Lingering Effects on Customers Today
AT&T customers still feel the carryover from those monopoly days:
- Opaque Billing & Documentation – Vague service orders, unclear line items, billing codes, hidden surcharges, fees billed for having to send a bill, etc… make sense only in an environment where the customer is last.
- Rigid Policies – “This is how we’ve always done it” still trumps flexibility for many customer scenarios.
- Slow, Impersonal Service – Support structures built for compliance, not customer satisfaction, often leave businesses feeling like a ticket number instead of a partner.
- Technology Gaps – Legacy infrastructure and slow adoption cycles can make it harder for customers to get the agility they expect from a modern technology partner.
For many businesses, these issues translate into downtime, unnecessary costs, and missed opportunities, things no organization can afford in today’s competitive landscape.
The New Reality for Telecom Giants
Today, AT&T faces a far different world. Technology has adapted so that companies never have to buy anything from AT&T any more and most choose to buy nothing from them. Regulatory capture is at least on pause under Trump. We’ll see how and if this continues. In a competitive “Market-driven” environment, AT&T management won’t be able to easily boost the numbers at the end of quarter to impress Wall Street. Most importantly, core AT&T customer, and now, employee loyalty has eroded to nearly zero.
What This Means for Your Business
If you’ve ever felt like your telecom, IT, or security systems provider makes things harder than they should be, you’re not imagining it. The systems, procedures, and mindsets that originated in the monopoly era still influence how many large companies operate, even in a supposedly competitive market.
The result?
- Slow responsiveness when problems arise
- Minimal proactive communication
- A lack of transparency in pricing, timelines, and service scope
This is why businesses are increasingly turning to partners who can bridge that gap, providers who operate with the agility, clarity, and responsiveness that today’s market demands.
BTI’s Approach: A Modern Partner Mindset
At BTI, we’ve built our business around what customers actually need now and for the future, not what worked in a monopoly-driven past.
When you work with BTI, you get:
- Clear, detailed documentation – Quotes and service orders that match your inventory, with every cost and deliverable clearly defined.
- Responsive, knowledgeable support – No endless call queues. Our team knows your account and your environment.
- Full-service solutions – From telecom to IT, cybersecurity, and physical security, we offer an integrated approach so you can consolidate vendors and simplify management.
- Proactive communication – We monitor your systems, licenses, and contracts so you’re never surprised by an expiration or service gap.
- Customer-first approach – Every solution is designed around delivering measurable value for the client, not protecting a legacy model.
- Adaptability without layoffs – In 40 years, we’ve never needed to send a “market realities” memo or lay off staff.
- Full-scope expertise – From phones to IT infrastructure, data security, and physical security systems, we integrate and support it all without locking you into unnecessary vendor dependencies.
In other words, BTI acts like a partner, not a gatekeeper. We believe customers deserve options, transparency, and results, values that simply weren’t part of the monopoly-era playbook.
AT&T Layoffs Final Thought
The telecom and technology industry has changed, but old habits die hard. The good news is, you’re no longer limited to providers that operate with outdated mindsets. If you’re ready for a technology partner who prioritizes your success, BTI is here to help with the expertise, responsiveness, and clarity that today’s businesses demand.
Contact BTI today to discover how we can help.
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