Financial Performance:

Southern New England Telephone, a subsidiary of SBC Communications, Inc.

The difficulties in evaluating the relative success or failure of a company in the telecommunications industry, or any government-regulated service, such as telephone service, are numerous. How does one evaluate the overall success of the company, in relation to financial and legal difficulties, even to outright failures of its subsidiaries on a local level? Also, how does one unravel the legal snarls that plague the communications industry in a climate that often fluctuates from state to local ordinances? "Pity the Regulator," wrote The Economist in 1997, when the Internet and communications snarl was just beginning to grip the nation and the world. However, when writing the recent history of Southern New England Telephone, one might want to extend pity to this subsidiary of SBC as well.

Over the course of the last several financial quarters, there has been...
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