AT&T Corporation, an abbreviation for its former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was an American telecommunications company that provided voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agencies.

SBC then changed its name to AT&T Inc., with AT&T Corporation continuing to exist as a long distance subsidiary until its dissolution on May 1, 2024.

[11] AT&T was involved mainly in the telephone business and, although it was a partner with RCA, was reluctant to see radio grow because such growth might diminish the demand for wired services.

As a result, WEAF began broadcasting entertainment material, drawing amateur talent found among its employees.

[14] Under Vail, AT&T began buying up many of the smaller telephone companies including Western Union telegraph.

[13][14] In the Kingsbury Commitment, AT&T and the government reached an agreement that allowed AT&T to continue operating as a telephone monopoly, subject to certain conditions, including divesting its interest in Western Union.

Throughout most of the 20th century, AT&T held a semi-monopoly on phone service in the United States and Canada through a network of companies called the Bell System.

[15] The implementation of cables assured local and long-distance telephone or data services would provide revenue for the company.

[17] Western Electric was the manufacturing company responsible for production and supply of undersea coaxial equipment and later, fiber cables.

[18] Also, Bell Labs was responsible for the innovations of products[19] or technologies in cabling in transmission by undersea systems.

This was prompted by suspicion that AT&T was using monopoly profits from its Western Electric subsidiary to subsidize the cost of its network, a violation of antitrust law.

With its expansion it moved to New York City, to a headquarters on 195 Broadway (close to what is now the World Trade Center site).

Designed by William Welles Bosworth, who played a significant role in designing Kykuit, the Rockefeller mansion north of Tarrytown, New York, it was a modern steel structure clad top to bottom in a Greek-styled exterior, the three-story-high Ionic columns of Vermont granite forming eight registers over a Doric base.

Instead of a large double-high space, similar to the nearby Woolworth Building, Bosworth designed what is called a "hypostyle hall", with full-bodied Doric columns modeled on the Parthenon, marking out a grid.

Bosworth also designed the campus of MIT as well as Theodore N. Vail's mansion in Morristown, New Jersey.

The 295 North Maple Avenue and Interstate 287 location of Basking Ridge in Bernards Township, New Jersey was completed in 1975 for the AT&T General Department offices.

The property had a 15-acre underground parking garage with spaces for 3,900 vehicles, and included a Class 1 licensed private helipad, a two-story cafeteria, a wood-burning fireplace, an indoor waterfall at the entrance lobby, and a seven-acre created lake for flood control.

Later, across the street from the complex, AT&T purchased additional land and established its Learning Center in 1985, at 300 North Maple Avenue, to become a 171 conference room inn.

The AT&T Learning Center won the commercial property known as Somerset County's Land Development Award that year.

In 1992, Basking Ridge location would become a corporate headquarters just before AT&T leased the New York City, 550 Madison Avenue building to Sony in 1993.

In 1992, a corporate art consultant approached, artist sculptor, Elyn Zimmerman, to commission a 30-foot diameter project with fountain and seating area for the conference center courtyard gardens.

[46] On February 15, 2024, AT&T Inc. filed notice with the Kentucky Public Service Commission that it intends to make an internal structural change and merge AT&T Corp. into AT&T Enterprises, Inc., which will become a limited liability company.

[48] AT&T, prior to its merger with SBC Communications, had three core companies: AT&T Alascom sold service in Alaska.

During some strikes by its employees, picketers would wear T-shirts reading, "Ma Bell is a real mother."