@2ytn.
Ed was a Texas Tech IE Grad. Started out at Whitehall CO Test Center. Worked his way up by threatening those doing their job. Used to monitor test center calls and bawl out those that had the gaul to answer the phone and maybe get off work topic momentarily. Hatchetman, got his raises by ensuring employees didn't.
Took credit for everything positive, found guilt when things turned to sh–. He was like 3rd in line below Hayes who was destined to be President CEO when Zane retired. Zane lost his $ going thru divorce and Ed somehow became #1 on the take over list. Interesting, Zane was placed on bod and given opportunity to recoup divorce losses. Ed wasted money putting baby bells back together with their electro mechanical and analog switches. Should have been plowing fiber, not buying dying telco's and investing in voip and better cellular upgrades. Under Whit's reign, A&M grads were placed into executive positions and most of them were not up to the task. I could name off 15 right now that played lot's of golf, screwed lot's of women, used corp purchasing card for expensive meals at 5 star hotels for lunch and supper. Training center was a joke known as the center for lunch. Last real executive this outfit had was charlie brown. Then..Project Pronto failure,.Amdocs failure, Directv failure, TW failures? A better investment is drinking beer and saving the bottles to sell at the next depression.
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In looking back, I really love Whitacre, a real man to admire. It's a shame he handed the reigns to a man like Randell, such a failure and disappointment now as we look back.
: @2msg+16Xd6a9q Per the old articles Whitacre started off as a lineman. Never had a computer in his office. Larger than life personality in the old world. Took the smallest and weakest RBOC to the largest. As for the other RBOCs, Ameritech was a pig in the poke. Their facilities were cratering. Ed faced numerous PUC issues after taking it over. Had to pour money in to get from under those issues. Of course the lack of due diligence was on him. Bell South was offered up by their executives when he attempted to take over Cingular. They basically admitted they didn’t have the resources to make it as a stand alone company. (Will say they did a great job of stretching the lifespan of old systems and facilities). Wasn’t all roses for those companies.
Buggy Whips for sale. Quality - American Made - Numerous Styles - Colors - Attractively Priced.
Huge Demand - Quantities Limited.
Buy before we sell out.
Does this ring a Bell?
When i started work there under Ed, the Internet was exploding (this was 1998), and people were absolutely voraciously hungry for broadband. SBC could have locked in dedicated users for decades with a wide, reliable broadband rollout.
Ed's answer? Half-a$$ a DSL rollout and put all his eggs in LONG DISTANCE. Literally the company was laser focused on the only thing that mattered to Ed: long distance. A few short years later, long distance was rendered moot by mobile phones, and the company still struggled with sparsely available broadband.
Whitacre was a old copper guy. Had success with that mindset but didn’t deploy the capital for the new age. If not for the exclusive IPhone contract things would have gotten bad much earlier. Bought time to try and bring our wireless services into the 20th century.
All you need to know about Ed is his legacy was defined by his picking Randy to take his place.
Who? Hmmm...no. My company was way better before he purchased it. We had better benefits, job security and worker satisfaction. That old dude can stay in retirement. Someone above said he’s a contractor. Hopefully, he just collects the check and contributes nothing.
Haha. He’s still on payroll as a contractor.
When he bought us , Ameritech ..we went 20 back in time. We have never been the same and every year it has gotten worse
Would have , could have, should have.... Ed will never be 30 years younger. . Move on and do something productive.
short answer, no.
And yet, Elliott state’s that Whitaker returned a 2,000 % return to investors, we had minimal layoffs and we grew marketshare organically.... plz do some basic research on your next post.... agree he made a huge mistake putting RS in charge.....
All Whitacre ever did was bribe his RBOC peers into selling out by giving them a big payday and then offering the shareholders of the target RBOC a 20% premium without a collar which turned into a 10-15% premium off a depressed share price which in the end did not even equate to a premium above the previous all-time high of the target RBOC. Maybe clever but nothing much incremental for the existing SWB shareholders
He bought PacBell landline while VZ bought the wireless spinoff from Ginn - another clever dirtbag and not very clever from a strategic sense.
He was another Texas nothing burger - the only thing he would not have done is buy all the stuff that RS bought, which I guess IS something. All of the original AT&T leaders were just a bunch of no-talent monopolists who could never have been successful in a typical competitive market.
Simply, no
Whitacre was the one that ruined it in the first place. SBC has ruined everything.
"Same fundamentally flawed T-think has prevailed since then and driven the company into the ground, again."
Baloney. They may have taken the name, but it's SBC running the show. AT&T = All Texas Telephone
No. As a matter of fact, we need him back to fix this mess.
Agreed RS was not a good choice, and then RS listened to people that knew even less than he did.
I guess Ed wanted the globe back as the logo. Sadly, T owned the logo and thus the trade was logo for management say-so, even though T leadership had already proven that they CANNOT run a successful company.. Same fundamentally flawed T-think has prevailed since then and driven the company into the ground, again.
Bull 5hit. Big Ed's stated goal was to GET BIG. We gotta get big. So what does Eddie do? Project Pronto.
Buy the baby bell's and put the Bell System back together again with all of those XBar, SxS Switches, 1a and 1e switches. That sob wasted money like a drunken sailor then b–ched when "the competition" was using "his pipes". Yeah, sure - a real winning executive.
When times were good that old fart got his raise and we didnt and he took credit.
When times were bad that old fart got a raise and we didn't and he blames the employees.
Anybody remember Pope and that extra $1k manager received a day after Pope "retired"? Guess that $1G was supposed to make up for decades of no inflation raise.
No! He knew the business.
Whitarce's only mistake was naming Ratty as his replacement, the cook-the-books champion.