When I was growing up, AT&T was affectionately (or disparagingly, depending on your point of view) called "Ma Bell." Over the past several years, it has been interesting to see the court-supervised breakup of Ma Bell into the "Baby Bells", followed progressively by recombination of several of these entitites, along with some new business units, into the "new" AT&T. Perhaps Stephen Colbert explains it best in this video from http://schomer.vox.com/:

Note 1: Sorry, but this video seems to have disappeared from cyberspace. I'm still looking. Perhaps AT&T didn't like the publicity! :)

Note 2: I found a YouTube link that seems to work. However embedding has been disabled "by request."

Technorati Tags: Telecommunications, AT&T, Ma Bell, Stephen Colbert