How AT&T got busted up and pieced back together

When you look at the history of AT&T, you wonder why federal regulators ever bothered to break up the telecom giant.

To tear down a nationwide monopoly, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company was forcibly split into "Baby Bells" in 1984. But most of those have since joined forces once again, forming the AT&T we know today. Not all the parts made it back into "Ma Bell," though. Several Baby Bells later merged to form Verizon. One part eventually gave birth to CenturyLink. But the vast majority melted back together to form the new AT&T.

Now, AT&T is trying to buy DirecTV for $49 billion, which would be the fourth-biggest telecommunications merger in history. AT&T already rules over an empire of wireless, landline telephone and fiber optic cables. If regulators approve the deal, it will get a satellite TV network too -- and control over the content flowing to nearly every screen in our lives.