With the proposed sale of Lucent to the French firm Alcatel, the twenty-two year deconstruction of AT&T is complete. Although SBC has kept the AT&T name, the "new" AT&T is really a different beast than the "old" AT&T.
Lucent was born from the ashes of AT&T Technologies, which was born from the ashes of Western Electric. Western Electric was the manufacturing arm of Ma Bell, and made the best telephone and network equipment in the world for many decades. The design standard at Western Electric was that its equipment should have no more than one hour of downtime every forty years (not a typo). That standard was achieved regularly, as much of AT&T's equipment had no downtime at all for forty year periods.
Western Electric played a quiet but critically important role in the winning of World War II, in partnership with the other old AT&T flagship, Bell Labs. The two units designed and engineered all kinds of electric and electronic equipment for the military, and the relationship with the U.S. government has continued to the present. Many of the most sophisticated military systems have been designed and built by AT&T--and many of them are so secret that few are aware of them. Indeed, one of the issues surrounding the sale will be the acquisition of those research and manufacturing facilities that produce equipment for the government, and whether or not ownership by a foreign company is an issue.
Lucent's downfall was a failure to recognize that the Internet was going to fundamentally change telephony. While other companies poured money into packet-based network equipment in the mid and late nineties, Lucent doggedly stuck to making switched telephone equipment as the mainstay of its of business. The company did have IP-based products, but failed to market them properly. In the end, the old Ma Bell arrogance of senior leadership undid the entire company.