TITLE: AT&T to Buy Stake in Sun Microsystems
FROM: New York Times
DATE: January 7, 1988
by Andrew Pollack
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 6 - The American Telephone and Telegraph Company
said today that it would acquire up to 20 percent of Sun Microsystems Inc. a
fast-growing manufacturer of computer work stations for engineers and
scientists.
The agreement between the two companies allies the vast resources of
AT&T., which has been struggling in computers, with the inventiveness of Sun,
a plucky California company that has defied industry convention and is fast
becoming one of the major companies in the computer business.
Challenging the Giants
Together, AT&T and Sun, which announced a cooperative technology
development agreement in October, hope to create a major new camp in the
computer industry that will challenge the two industry giants: the
International Business Machines Corporation and the Digital Equipment Corporation.
Under the agreement, Sun will sell AT&T a 15 percent stake consisting of
newly issued shares at a price 25 percent above market value. The sales
will occur over the next three years at a schedule to be determined by Sun,
subject to certain deadlines. AT&T can buy the remaining 5 percent in the open
market.
At today's prices, AT&T's investment in Sun would ammount to about
$300 million, the companies said. AT&T will also get a seat on Sun's board
and will nominate Vittorio Cassoni, president of its data systems group, to
fill it.
1-900s: Still Under Fire
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
1-900 services are still under fire by the media. The biggest problem is kids
calling 1-900 chat lines and calling porn lines (of which many are 1-900s).
In California, there are something like 470 different porn lines to call. Ma
Bell has started to issue a service that would cancel out the service.
Certain businesses (with large phone systems) have had their phone systems
cancel out calls because so many employees have been calling the different
call-in services. And then there are those kids who sit around on chat and
porn lp the famous $1000 phone bills.
TITLE: Phone Credit Card Rings Up $5,430 Bill
FROM: The Chicago Sun-Times
DATE: January 18, 1988
By John Jeter
Jeffrey Zan and Donna Plybon have been seeing each other about six
months and share all sorts of secrets, including her telephone credit card
number.
Apparently that secret got out, and they recently received her phone
bill- 53 pages long with a total of $5,430.81 for calls from California
to Qatar, from Elmhurst to Ethiopia.
"How many phones are in Ethiopia, you know?" said an incredulous Zang,
21, of Wheeling. "We send these guys mega-food and they're talking on the
telephone. I'm serious; this is really crazy."
Zang, who works for a magazine sales company in Arlington Heights, is
frequently on the road and follows the "phone first" advice. He regularly
calls from area pay phones, using the AT&T Calling Card belonging to Plybon,
22, of Brookfield.
On Nov. 23, Zang said, he made a call from an Elmhurst 7-Eleven to a
client in Roselle, and he speculated that somebody in the store overheard
his conversation.
"What happened was, this guy got the phone number, hearing it from me,
and he called his squeeze in Pakistan, and then he gave the number to all of
his buddies all over the country, and it just became a chain letter the went
on from [Dec. 7] all the way to [Dec. 19]," he said, naming the dates on the
bill.
Plybon received the bill Friday, and the two reported it to AT&T
Saturday night- after a study in geography and international economics.
The priciest call was an 84-minute chat from Elmhurst to Pakistan that
cost $254. There were calls from Chicago to the United Arab Emirates,
from Saratoga, Calif. to Norway, and to Somalia and Singapore.
"AT&T is really freaking out," Zang said.
"This is my first time of hearing of a bill that high," said Vicki
McNair, an AT&T account representative at Parsippany, N.J.
Zang and Plybon are "innocent until proven guilty, as it's always said.
So they're not responsible until we get an investigation on it to see what
really went on," she said.
Ron Gaddy, an AT&T account specialist, said credit card fraud, a
federal offense, requres investigations that take up to 30 days.
Needless to say, the card has been cancelled, though Plybon and Zang's
relationship hasn't because it's based on trust, the two said.
"I was just letting him us it [the card] for his business because he's my
boyfriend," Plybon said. "It's not like he's going to be calling Pakistan."
TITLE: AT&T Accuses G.S.A. of Helping Competitors
FROM: The New York Times
DATE: January 14, 1988
by Calvin Sims
The American Telephone and Telegraph Company yesterday formally accused
officials of the General Services Administration of leaking sensitive
information to its competitors, enabling them to win government telephone
contracts at AT&T's expense.
The Federal Government has been investigating allegations that agency
officials gave AT&T's confidential bid information to competing companies in
return for bribes and favors. AT&T has said that such information was used to
outbid it on contracts to supply the government with computerized switching
equipment worth about $55 million.
