AT&T

Today’s AT&T Inc. was formerly SBC Communications Inc. (SBC), one of several regional holding companies created to hold the local telephone companies of the original AT&T Corp. Under an antitrust consent decree, SBC was spun off from AT&T Corp. on January 1, 1984, becoming an independent publicly traded telecommunications provider operating primarily in five southwestern states; the company was incorporated in Delaware in 1983.⁠[1][1][2][1]

SBC’s subsidiaries merged with Pacific Telesis Group in 1997, Southern New England Telecommunications in 1998 and Ameritech Corporation in 1999, expanding its wireline operations as an incumbent local exchange carrier to 13 states.⁠[2]

Cingular Wireless, SBC’s wireless joint venture with BellSouth, acquired AT&T Wireless Services Inc. in late 2004, increasing SBC’s growth potential in wireless.⁠[3][3]

On November 18, 2005, an SBC subsidiary merged with the original AT&T Corp., creating one of the world’s largest telecommunications providers; the company then changed its name from “SBC Communications Inc.” to “AT&T Inc.,” using both the AT&T and SBC brands during a transition period.⁠[3][3]

On December 29, 2006, an AT&T subsidiary merged with BellSouth Corporation, extending its services to nine more states; AT&T also acquired BellSouth’s 40% economic interest in AT&T Mobility (formerly Cingular Wireless), giving it full ownership of the wireless carrier.⁠[4][4]

In March 2011, AT&T agreed to acquire all shares of T-Mobile USAT-MobileT-Mobile (T-Mobile US, Inc.) is one of the major U.S. wireless carriers, headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, and Overland Park, Kansas, and controlled by Deutsche Telekom. Its predecessor was VoiceStream Wireless, founded in 1994; it listed on Nasdaq after combining with MetroPCS in 2013 and merged with Sprint in 2020.Open the full entry from Deutsche Telekom for approximately $39 billion. In light of opposition from the U.S. Department of Justice and the FCC, the parties agreed in December 2011 to terminate the deal; AT&T paid a $3 billion breakup fee, entered into a broadband roaming agreement and transferred certain wireless spectrum, and recorded $4.181 billion in charges that year related to the termination.⁠[5][5][5][5]

In March 2014, AT&T acquired prepaid wireless provider Leap Wireless International for $15.00 per share, or $1.248 billion (excluding Leap’s cash), plus one nontransferable contingent value right per share.⁠[6]

In January 2015, AT&T submitted winning bids of $18.189 billion for 251 AWS spectrum licenses in the FCC’s Auction 97 (the AWS-3 auction), having paid a $921 million down payment in October 2014 and paying the remaining $17.268 billion in the first quarter of 2015.⁠[6][6]

On April 8, 2015, the FCC Enforcement Bureau reached a settlement with AT&T Services. The investigation concerned data breaches at AT&T call centers in Mexico, Colombia and the Philippines that exposed personal information, such as names and at least the last four digits of Social Security numbers, and customer proprietary network information of almost 280,000 customers; at least two employees confessed to selling the information to a third party, and the data was used to submit more than 290,000 handset unlock requests. AT&T agreed to pay a $25 million civil penalty, appoint a privacy-certified senior compliance manager and implement a compliance plan, and the Bureau terminated its investigation.⁠[7][7][7][7][7][7][7][7]

In 2015, AT&T acquired wireless properties in Mexico, operating under brands including Iusacell, Unefon and Nextel Mexico. On July 24 of that year it completed the acquisition of DIRECTV, a digital television provider in the United States and Latin America; based on that day’s closing price, consideration paid to DIRECTV shareholders totaled $47.409 billion, including $32.727 billion in AT&T stock and $14.378 billion in cash, giving them about 16% of the combined company. The FCC approved the deal on conditions including a requirement that AT&T offer all-fiber internet service to at least 12.5 million customer locations within four years.⁠[8][8][6][6][6]

In March 2017, the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) selected AT&T to build and manage the first nationwide broadband network dedicated to first responders, giving AT&T access to a nationwide 20 MHz block of low-band spectrum.⁠[9][2]

The U.S. Department of Justice sued in 2017 to block AT&T’s acquisition of media group Time Warner; on June 12, 2018, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled in AT&T’s favor. AT&T completed the acquisition on June 14, gaining businesses including Turner, HBO and Warner Bros., which it organized as the WarnerMedia segment; total consideration was $79.358 billion, excluding Time Warner’s net debt.⁠[10][10][9][2][9]

The Justice Department appealed on July 12, 2018; on February 26, 2019, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled unanimously that the department had failed to prove the trial judge misunderstood and misapplied the economic evidence, upholding the ruling.⁠[9][10][10]

Randall Stephenson served as AT&T’s Chairman, CEO and President from June 2007; in July 2020, John Stankey succeeded him as CEO and President, adding the role of Chairman in February 2025.⁠[2][11][1]

AT&T bid a total of $23.406 billion in the FCC’s Auction 107 (C-Band) and was awarded 1,621 C-Band licenses, including 40 MHz nationwide available for deployment in December 2021 and the remainder in December 2023; it began deploying C-Band 5G in January 2022.⁠[11][11]

In July 2021, AT&T closed a transaction with TPG Capital to form DIRECTV Entertainment Holdings, separating its U.S. video business and accounting for it under the equity method: AT&T received $4.25 billion of junior preferred units, a $4.2 billion additional distribution preference and a 70% economic interest in common units, along with about $7.17 billion in cash, while TPG contributed about $1.8 billion for preferred units and a 30% economic interest. Its Latin American video business, Vrio, was sold in November 2021, and in July 2025 AT&T sold its remaining DIRECTV interest to TPG.⁠[1][1][11][11][11][1][1]

On April 8, 2022, AT&T completed the separation of WarnerMedia through a Reverse Morris Trust transaction: Magallanes, the subsidiary holding the business, merged with a subsidiary of Discovery, Inc., which was renamed Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). AT&T shareholders received 0.241917 WBD shares for each AT&T share, together about 71% of WBD, and before the separation AT&T received about $40.4 billion, including $38.8 billion in cash.⁠[12][12][12][12]

On April 29, 2024, the FCC announced penalties against the four major wireless carriers for selling customer location data, fining AT&T $57,265,625, the amount proposed in its February 28, 2020 notice of apparent liability. The FCC found that AT&T’s location-based services program, which ran until March 2019, sold customer location information to aggregators that resold it to third parties without valid consent or reasonable safeguards. AT&T argued that location information is not protected customer proprietary network information, that it lacked fair notice, and that it acted reasonably.⁠[13][14][14][14][13][14][14]

After paying the penalty, AT&T petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which vacated the order on the ground that the FCC’s enforcement procedures denied a jury trial in violation of the Seventh Amendment. On June 4, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Fifth Circuit 8–1 and remanded, holding that FCC forfeiture orders do not themselves settle a party’s obligation to pay, that the government must bring a separate suit with a de novo jury trial to collect, and that the procedure therefore does not violate the Seventh Amendment; Justice Thomas dissented.⁠[15][15][15][15][15][15][15]

On July 12, 2024, AT&T filed a material cybersecurity incident report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: it had learned on April 19 that a threat actor claimed to have unlawfully accessed and copied its call logs, and its investigation found that attackers exported files from an AT&T workspace on a third-party cloud platform between April 14 and 25, 2024, containing records of call and text interactions of nearly all AT&T wireless customers and of customers of resellers using its network from May 1 to October 31, 2022 and on January 2, 2023, including the numbers contacted, counts and durations and, for some records, cell site identifiers, but not the content of communications, Social Security numbers or dates of birth. The U.S. Department of Justice twice determined that public disclosure could be delayed; AT&T said it had closed off the point of access and understood that at least one person had been apprehended.⁠[16][16][16][16][16][16][16][16]

Earlier, in March 2024, AT&T said it was investigating a data set released on the dark web affecting about 7.6 million current and 65.4 million former account holders, which appeared to date from 2019 or earlier. AT&T agreed to settle class actions over the two incidents for $177 million, which a judge finally approved in October 2026; AT&T denied wrongdoing and said it settled to avoid the expense and uncertainty of protracted litigation.⁠[17][17][17][17][17]

On September 17, 2024, the FCC announced a $13 million settlement with AT&T over a data breach in a vendor’s cloud environment. AT&T had used the vendor to produce billing and marketing videos for customers, and years after the contract ended the vendor had still not destroyed or returned customer data as required; in January 2023, attackers stole AT&T customer information from the vendor’s cloud environment. The settlement requires AT&T to strengthen data inventory, vendor retention and disposal controls and to conduct annual compliance audits.⁠[18][18][18][18][18][18]

On May 21, 2025, AT&T agreed to acquire Lumen Technologies’ Mass Markets fiber business for $5.75 billion in cash, covering about one million fiber customers and more than four million fiber locations at signing; the deal closed on February 2, 2026, for $5.756 billion, with the fiber network assets placed in wholly owned subsidiary Forged Fiber 37 Services, a controlling interest in which AT&T plans to sell to a co-investing equity partner. In November 2024, AT&T agreed to buy select spectrum licenses from United States Cellular for about $1.0 billion, completing the purchase on January 13, 2026, for $1.018 billion in cash.⁠[1][1][19][19][1][1]

On August 25, 2025, AT&T agreed to buy FCC licenses in the 600 MHz and 3.45 GHz bands from EchoStar for about $23 billion; the deal closed on July 28, 2026, adding about 30 MHz of nationwide 3.45 GHz mid-band spectrum and about 20 MHz of nationwide 600 MHz low-band spectrum covering virtually every U.S. market.⁠[1][20][20][20]

On October 1, 2026, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon signed a joint venture agreement implementing a plan announced in May to pool limited spectrum resources and eliminate U.S. dead zones through satellite direct-to-device service; Paul Roth, a former executive at AT&T, Cingular Wireless and Ameritech, is interim CEO, the venture is managed by a board with representatives of all three partners, and each carrier’s existing satellite agreements remain in place.⁠[21][21][21][21]

On September 29, 2026, SaaS security company RecoRecoReco is an enterprise cybersecurity company founded in 2020 by Ofer Klein, Gal Nakash and Tal Shapira. Its products have expanded from securing collaboration tools and SaaS applications to securing AI agents, discovering the connections among an enterprise’s applications, identities, permissions and agents and revoking risky access; as of September 2026, the company had raised $140 million in total.Open the full entry announced $55 million in additional funding, including a strategic investment from AT&T’s venture arm, AT&T VenturesAT&T VenturesAT&T Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of the US telecommunications company AT&T, investing mainly in early-stage technology companies from seed to Series B in areas including networking and edge computing, the internet of things, robotics and physical AI, cybersecurity, and data and AI.Open the full entry; AT&T itself is a Reco customer.⁠[22][23]

On October 8, 2026, SpaceX announced an agreement with Grain ManagementGrain ManagementGrain Management (Grain Management, LLC) is a private investment firm headquartered in Washington, D.C., founded by David Grain in 2007, that invests exclusively in digital infrastructure such as fiber networks, wireless spectrum, cell towers, data centers and telecommunications services. In 2026 it acquired a nationwide portfolio of 800 MHz low-band spectrum from T-Mobile and then agreed to sell that spectrum to SpaceX, a transaction still pending approval by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.Open the full entry to acquire a nationwide portfolio of 800 MHz low-band spectrum for Starlink Mobile; after the news, shares of AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon each fell about 6% in after-hours trading.⁠[24][24]

On October 13, 2026, AT&T announced an agreement to sell AT&T Mexico to Grupo Televisa and Fintech Holdings for $2 billion in cash at closing, plus additional contractual and contingent benefits. Chairman and CEO John Stankey said the move was consistent with the company’s long-term strategy of focusing capital on growth opportunities in the U.S. market.⁠[25][25][25]

As of October 2026, John Stankey is Chairman, CEO and President. AT&T’s Communications segment comprises Mobility (nationwide wireless service), Business Wireline (business fiber and wireline) and Consumer Wireline (home fiber broadband and the fixed wireless access product AT&T Internet Air delivered over its 5G network), while its Latin America segment provides wireless service in Mexico; it also provides a dedicated public safety network through FirstNet. At the end of 2025, AT&T had 120 million Mobility subscribers (91 million postpaid) and about 133,030 employees; it is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol T.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1][1][16]

AT&T: Official website: https://www.att.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

X: Public account: https://x.com/ATT (opens in a new window)⁠[26]