AT&T are up to $64 billion in debt at the end of the fourth quarter in year 2000.  The company is trying to sell some of their small shares of other companies they own.  As of now, Mediacom Communications are buying some cable-tv systems for $2.2 billion.  The sale to Mediacom consists of about 840,000 customers, which are relatively found in major metropolitan areas.  AT&T had to decided to just concentrateoutside metropolitan areas anyway.  They are also selling their 10% share of Japan Telecom to Vodafone Group for $1.35 billion.  These two sales have brought helped the debt decrease to about $42 billion. AT&T believes that they will continuously decrease the debt by atleast half by the end of the upcoming year. 

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AT&T has decided to change their strategy when it comes to ad campaigns for dialing 1-800-CALL-ATT.  The company wants to now focus on teenagers by using celebrities as their advertisements.  AT&T as well as their rival, WorldCom, have both agreed that celebrities can pursue teens to dial collect numbers.  These commercials will also be running during favorite teenage television shows, "Friends," "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" and XFL.  In advertisements, AT&T before focused on mainly stressing the actual phone number, now they are just trying to remind viewers when to use collect calling.  The two companies have realized that getting the message to teens is going to be hard, but are prepared to continue with this new strategy. 

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The fourth quarter revenue for Comcast Corp. increased by almost 26%.  As a result of the strong demand for digital cable tv and internet service, the company greatly prospered during the quarter.  Although the revenue increased the company's earnings still did not meet the expectations of Wall Street.  During the fourth quarter, Comcast collected $1.7 billion from AT&T for some cable TV properties.  The companies claims they would have received a 29 cents-a-share loss without that $1.7 billion.   After comparing to the previous year, Comcast's revenue grew from $1.93 billion to $2.41 billion.  The company's shares are up to $44.06 in the Nasdaq Stock Market.

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AT&T and AOL go head to head determining the appropriate payment for AT&T's share of Time Warner Entertainment.  AOL has offered between $9 to $10 billion for AT&T's 25.5% share of TWE, while AOL holds the other 74.5%.  When AT&T took over this share from MediaOne, they claim the appraised value was in the mid-teens roughly around $15 billion.  AT&T has the disadvantage because there no other buyers for their portion of TWE besides AOL.  That allows AOL to be in control of the majority of the trade. AT&T is prepared to negotiate until they feel the trade is fair.  Most people had thought the deal would be signed by now. 

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Cox Communications, at one time had a strong reputation for operations of cable tv is now suffering from great loss.  The company invested in TCA cable tv,  a Texas cable operator that  mainly works out of rural systems.  While focusing on TCA deals a key rival, Qwest Communications took over the area of Phoenix which was one of Cox's key market.  Qwest provided more advanced digital video service, free installation and other extras.  Cox customers were drawn to what Qwest had to offer.  Cox Communications had planned to expand their phone service to other new markets, but is now trying to maintain and concentrate on the markets they have as of now.  The company's expenses have increased by 74% from $1.15 billion to now $2 billion and is expecting to spend the same in the upcoming year.  The company's stock has fallen 5% or to $41.76 per share.  Cox claims they will feel the loss of Phoenix for a while.

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Nextel Communications was very pleased of the outcome of the fourth quarter of year 2000.  Due to their wireless services they were able to accomplish an incredible amount of sales.  Their revenue continuously increased throughout the quarter unfortunately so did the capital expenditures.  The company's expenses increased by 41% after compared to the previous fourth quarter.  The sales acquired during this quarter were able to boost the Nextel stock by $4.13, which came to $25.44 per share.  The company still maintained a loss of $61 million at the end of the fourth quarter but is satisfied after comparing to the $369 million loss in the previous year.  Nextel is excited for the upcoming year and hopes to reach a $7 billion goal in revenue. 

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Covad Communications a high-speed internet service has delayed  their 2000 earning due to change in accounting procedures therefore trading of shares has been stopped.  The company has done some restructuring this past year, which ended up being more costly than they expected.  The restructuring entailed 800 layoffs and the closing of different Covad offices.  The company requested an extension to accurately account for all these changes.  Not only Covad but also their rivals claim, they suffer from many service and installation problems as well as a complicated business landscape.  Covad is considered one of the leading internet providers which has a $150 million investment from SBC Communications.  Yet the company is expected to lose about $4.36 per share in the upcoming year.  The company has decide to continue to make changes by closing 260 costly offices that will result in a positive reinforcement towards the company as a whole.

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AT&T reports a net loss for the fourth quarter 2000, which is compared to a profit of 1.5 billion or 36 cents of diluted share a year earlier.  The major contributor for the net loss was a 2.7 billion write down the company had to take due to the declining value of excite@home Corp., the high speed internet business that AT&T controls.  In addition the company's consumer long distance service fell 15% in the fourth quarter due to falling prices, aggressive new competitors and the substitution of wireless for traditional telephone calls.  The only upside, is that without the write down AT&T did meet the lowered expectations of Wall Street. 

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Federal Auction of U.S. airwaves brought in a record 16.86 billion.  Fiercest bidding was for licenses in New York.  Cellco, a partnership backed by Verizon Communications won two of the available licenses in metropolitan New York, while the third went to Alaska Native Wireless and arm of AT&T wireless.  Cingular a partnership between SBC Corp and Bellsouth was not able to secure one of the New York metro licenses.   Cellco spent the most, paying approximately 8.7 billion for 113 licenses.  The FCC hopes the new licenses will alleviate airwave congestion in cities.  Many of the licenses sold in the latest auction were reclaimed from Next Wave Telecom Inc who had acquired them in 1996, but has been tied up in litigation over them since. 

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SBC Communications compares their fourth quarter in year 2000 to the previous fourth quarter in 1999.  For the latest fourth quarter the company ended with an increase in revenue by 9.1% even though the net income was down by 39%.  The company explains a few important one-time expenses that played a major role in the loss of net profit.  One major reason was the merge with Ameritech, which was a cost of almost $204 million.  Although the merge was costly, the addition of Cingular Wireless affected the increase of revenue.   When comparing the difference between fourth quarters, SBC reports with the addition of wireless operations, revenue was $14.1 billion for 2000 and $12.9 billion in yr. 1999, and without wireless additions revenue would have dropped from $12.9 billion in 1999 to $12.24 billion in 2000.  As well as their wireless business, sales on data services were responsible for $2.2 of the $14.1 billion in revenue.  During the fourth quarter alone, data services acquired 251,000 more digital subscribers.   The company plans to continuously increase in both revenue and net earnings un the upcoming year 2001. 

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The FCC is considering revising the limits currently imposed on wireless telecommunication providers in urban markets.  The revision is even more likely since the control of the five-member commission is now under republican rule.  Limits were initially set so that no one single player could dominate a market.  Industry officials however are arguing that those limits now hamper development of better wireless internet services.  The markets are separated among different cellular providers such as Sprint being one example and Nextel Communications being another.  These companies are currently limited to 45 megahertz of spectrum in urban markets even though a 190-megahertz is available.

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The growth of international operations and data services has boosted Bellsouth’s fourth quarter net earnings by 6.6%.  During the quarter the company’s revenue had actually dropped from $6.65 billion to $6.16 until the addition of Cingular Wireless.  Joining the two wireless operations, Bellsouth and SBC Communications, created Cingular Wireless. Bellsouth’s revenue was able to jump by 10% with the help of Cingular Wireless.  Other factors such as Bellsouth’s domestic wireless and their data operations also increase as expected.  More and more customers are interested in the company’s internet services and advancement of new technologies.  At the end of the quarter Bellsouth received 215,000 subscribers to internet services, and expect around 600,000 by this time next year.  The goals for the upcoming year are to increase net by 7%-9%, and with the addition of Cingular Wireless, revenue should increase by 9%-11%. 

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The major long distance carriers have to rely on wireless and data services to increase their revenues.  AT&T, WorldCom, Sprint, and Qwest, have and will continue to experience fallings revenues in their consumer long distance services.  Decreases in rates, and decrease in uses, (consumers using more wireless long distance) are the two reasons.  Both AT&T, and WorldCom are splitting up their consumer long distance services from their wireless and data divisions so that investors can see the growth in the latter.  Both also expect that more of the consumer long distance market will go to local providers.

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