FUDBuster: AT&T Chairman: IP Will Outgrow Long Distance

FUDBust: Well, duh. Only at a carrier convention like Supercomm--where some service providers are still trying to find a market for ISDN--would Dorman's comments seem insightful. AT&T has spent decades defending its dominance of the long-distance market, only to find that its profits from that market have virtually dried up.

Oh, customers are still buying long-distance services--Dorman says AT&T billed more long-distance minutes in 2004 than in 1999--but prices for long-distance have dropped 17 percent to 18 percent annually for the past several years. And with VoIP services emerging, that rock can only continue to drop.

We wonder what would have happened if AT&T had reached this brilliant revelation in, say, 2000 instead of 2005. Maybe we'd all be getting VoIP services from Dorman's company, and SBC would be the one acquired.