y they believed they had. There were many days when Armstrong told me that he should have been a psychiatrist to be the CEO of AT&T. He had never seen SO many senior people, he said, who needed hand-holding and reas- surance. In fact, they were not unlike most people. Before deciding whether or not to follow someone into battle, we all ask, "Is he one of us?" When Armstrong let it be known that he would be going with the cable business when the company was once again broken apart, he confirmed their worst suspicions. AT&T 2.0 Even though Armstrong had decided to stay with the cable business as early as the fall of 200I, he also thought AT&T's long-distance busi- ness had a better than even chance to prosper on its own. While the consumer division's stand-alone long-distance business was clearly in decline, it still enjoyed margins of about 30 percent, about six times Tough Calls better than MCI WorldCom's at that point. The company was finally beginning to convince state public service commissions to set viable wholesale rates for leasing local lines from the Bell companies. The influential New York commission was leaning toward a wholesale dis- count of more than 30 percent, which would finally allow AT&T to make a small, but reasonable profit on local service. And once AT&T Consumer was separated from the cash-hungry cable businesses, it would be able to invest more aggressively in the deployment of digital subscriber loop technology, which would allow it to offer high-speed data service along with any-distance communications. Furthermore, while everyone had focused on Armstrong's multi- billion-dollar cable acquisition spree, few had noticed that he had also invested about $46 billion in the company's business service capabili- ties. The company's data services revenue was once again growing at double-digit rates. When the cable businesses were spun off and merged with Comcast, AT&T would have a smaller debt burden than its major long-distance competitors. Noski would have succeeded in lowering the company's d