COMING BACK TO MOTHER'S BREAST

There are reports in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal (registration required for both) that AT&T is close to a deal which would purchase BellSouth for $65 billion, providing the combined company with 70 million local line telephone customers and nearly 10 billion broadband subscribers.

A deal could be announced as early as tomorrow.

In a way, it's coming back to the fold for BellSouth. The Atlanta-based company was originally formed from the merger of two of the "Baby Bells", South Central Bell and Southern Bell in 1990, after AT&T was originally broken up in 1984.

Any final deal will have to be approved by regulators, and would take approximately a year to make happen.