Edward Whitacre, Jr.
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Edward E. Whitacre, Jr., commonly known as Ed Whitacre, is chairman of the board and chief executive officer of AT&T (formerly known as SBC Communications).
Whitacre began his career with the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company in 1963 as a facility engineer. In October 1988, Whitacre was made president and chief operating officer of Regional Bell Operating Company, Southwestern Bell Corporation. Two years later, Whitacre obtained his current position as chairman of the board and chief executive officer. In 1995, Southwestern Bell Corporation changed its name to SBC Communications. Whitacre led SBC through a series of mergers and acquisitions in building the largest provider of both local long distance telephone services and wireless service (through its Cingular division) in the United States. These acquisitions included Pacific Telesis (1997), SNET (1998), Comcast Cellular (1999), Ameritech (1999) and AT&T (2005), as well as the current (2006) proposed acquisition of Bell South.
Whitacre was a native of Ennis, Texas and graduated from Texas Tech University in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering.
On June 23, 2006, he and the CEO of BellSouth were brought in under the Senate Antitrust Subcomitee following the AT&T-BellSouth merger. Most questions to Whitacre were regarding possible customer information leaks to the NSA. He was tacit about this issue, regardless of the Senators' (particularly Sen. Arlen Specter's) chagrin. He is a vocal opponent of net neutrality. He's personally donated $1,000 contributions to Pete Sessions and John Ensign, while giving $500 to George Allen, all of whom are republicans who sit on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.[link]
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