om equipment business and the famed Bell Laboratories research organization were packaged together to form a new company, Lucent Technologies, in 1996. Meanwhile, the NCR deal, for which AT&T had such high hopes, had not panned out, and in 1997 it too was cut loose. Refocused solely on telecommunications services, AT&T began to diversify its offerings. When the Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed competition in local telephone service for the first time, AT&T reentered the local market, becoming a competitor to its Baby Visit Vault at www.vault.com for insider company profiles, expert advice, VAULT CAREER career message boards, expert resume reviews, the Vault Job Board and more. LIBRARY Vault Guide to the Top Telecom Employers Bell offspring. The company also introduced its WorldNet Internet service and began offering PCS cellular service through its wireless division. Armstrong tactics Michael Armstrong took the helm as CEO of AT&T in 1997. Recognizing that long- distance voice service was likely to decline in the years ahead, Armstrong pushed AT&T further into new business areas. He engineered the purchase of IBM Global Network to bolster the company's position in the data networking market. Next came the acquisitions of cable companies TCI and MediaOne. The new cable holdings were dubbed AT&T Broadband and constituted the largest cable company in the U.S. The wax and wane of AT&T's holdings was reaching a third peak, only to result in another divestiture and restructuring. In 2000, the company announced yet another redo. Breakup No. 3 meant reorganization into a "family" of companies. It did this by spinning off AT&T Wireless in July 2001 and by merging AT&T Broadband with cable giant Comcast in November 2002. When the AT&T Broadband/Comcast deal was completed, Armstrong stepped down as CEO and was succeeded by David Dorman. The Business Services and Consumer Services units, as well as AT&T Alascom, a network serving much of rural Alaska, spanning 367 acres of the last frontier, remained under the AT&T Cor