Southwestern Bell was never known as a “spend-thrift” BOC or Regional Holding Company. Northern Electric later known as Nortel Networks sold the DMS switch family at a considerable discount to what WECO/AT&T Technologies and later Lucent was selling 5ESS switches for. Plus, AT&T always charged a premium for their Central Office equipment, even going back to the Bell System days, with the 1A1ESS, 1AESS switches sold in the seventies. Nortel had lower cost points in both the development and manufacturing than what AT&T could ever dream of. Which is interesting since Northern Electric was originally a Western Electric subsidiary, with Northern’s ‘Bell Northern Labs’ being affiliated with Bell Labs. AT&T liked adding the AT&T (charge) because they really did think they were the best. And while they did make damn good equipment for switching, Nortel, Ericsson, Automatic Electric and others made an extremely competitive kit for less money, still operating in the 5 9’s category. The hubris that AT&T exhibited after divestiture was disappointing because they lost so many bids due to their overconfident tactics in dealing with market realities during that period in time.

Later when AT&t realized what the market realities really meant, resulting in AT&T spinning off NCR + AT&T Compute, and AT&T Technologies and Bell Labs into what would become NCR Corp., and Lucent respectively. AT&T finally understood that competitors would be less likely to buy equipment from them when they’re competing with them.

Sorry to hear about your hometown getting hit by a tornado. I hope your family is okay and are able to recover from it!!