Great-grandma Bell

摘要

Churches have altars, royalty has thrones, and AT&T has its network. For over 125 years, this was the source of the telecoms company's power and its most prized asset. Yet as telecoms capacity has become a commodity, the value of owning a network has diminished dramatically. It has forced AT&T to search for new areas of growth, but its prospects are not promising. Last week, the company's latest earnings figures included an $11.4 billion writedown of its assets, forced by a fall in prices due to competition and technologies such as "voice over internet protocol" (VOIP). The troubles which AT&T faces are severe. The company earns roughly half its revenue by charging for long-distance calls, but these earnings are tumbling at around 20% a year and will never recover. Long-distance calls using VOIP are essentially free.