le to brief Arm- strong, who was flying back from a speaking engagement in Los Angeles, on the deal they had worked out. AT&T would commit to putting Microsoft's software in two and a half to five million set-top boxes. In return, Microsoft would buy $5 billion in AT&T preferred shares and warrants and commit to buying MediaOne's interests in a U.K.-based cable company should AT&T's acquisition of MediaOne be successful. We issued the news release the next morning. By that afternoon, May 6, 1999, we also were able to announce that AT&T and MediaOne had reached a definitive merger agreement. For the moment, it looked, in the words of one industry consultant, as if "there wasn't a soul who lost in this deal. Comcast won, Microsoft won, MediaOne won and AT&T won." "Armstrong," said Reuters, "turned a bargaining table into a round table."2 But in retrospect, AT&T had made two bad bets at that table: first, that it could cash out its new investment in Time Warner Entertainment, and second, that its long-distance businesses would continue generating enough cash to support all the debt it was accumulating. Wall Street wasn't SO sure. AT&T's stock price had outperformed the overall market from the time of Armstrong's arrival until mid- 1999, when it submitted its bid for MediaOne. But from that point on, the stock underperformed its major competitors'. Armstrong thought he knew why-what he came to call the "voice overhang" was obscuring very real growth in the rest of the company. AT&T's con- sumer long-distance business, once the goose laying basket after bas- ket of golden eggs, was now an albatross around the company's neck. AT&T Business's data revenue was growing in the mid- to high teens, AT&T Broadband was growing at I2 percent, and AT&T Wire- less was growing at 40 percent. But it looked as if AT&T Consumer's revenue of about $20 billion would decline about 6 percent, essen- tially masking growth elsewhere in the company. So in February of 2000, Armstrong and Noski hired outside consultants to assess the unit's p