SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS—Two of the world’s oldest telephone companies announced plans today to merge into a telecommunications giant that will better serve consumers who own stock in either company. The news broke in an at&t press release trumpeting that the BellSouth merger “Will Speed Innovation, Competition and Convergence,” easing national concerns of slow competition. At press time, consumers were too busy converging to comment.

The news is less rosy for employees of the new company as it seeks to eliminate redundancy. BellSouth will lay off 50%—or 13,500—of its Dinnertime Telemarketers division, although most have already found new work as Perfume Blasters at Bloomingdale’s.

In an unusual twist, the announcement suggested not that the merger would ultimately bring both companies down in a spectacular fireball of finger-pointing and public humiliation, but instead that “this merger is a logical next step that creates substantial value” for consumers. AT&T Chairman Edward Whitacre promised that while customer service wait times would double, consumers would now be able to wait over Internet Protocol (WOIP).

The news comes amid a massive branding campaign by at&t to reposition itself as the nation’s provider of key services via billboards and newspaper ads that herald the company’s mission as “blogging delivered” and “photos delivered” . The campaign, which wraps up next month with “babies delivered,” seeks to revitalize the brand following a 2004 study that over 86% of adult males ages 18-26 identify AT&T as “some sort of pog?” In an effort to appear more trendy, the company lowercased its namesake to dismal results. But with SBC and now BellSouth under its belt, some analysts speculate that AT&T might be pursuing the holy grail of trendiness: a palindrome.

“They’re AT&SBC&BS&T now. Just one thing missing, and damned if I’m going to tell you what it is,” said Nigel McSnackenmeyer, a former Merrill-Lynch analyst who resigned today to found a new telecommunications company called “A”.

Shares in red-tape production companies rose $2500 in afterhours trading.