Ed Whitacre, the current AT&T (NYSE: T) CEO, has been running one or more of the Bells for a long time. He ran SBC since 1990 when it mergered with AT&T. In June, he hits retirement age. To no one's surprise, his No.2, Randall Stephenson, will move up to Chairman & CEO. Stephenson was chief operating officer at SBC before the merger. He was both controller and CFO before he took over operations.

Whitacre goes out on top. He engineered the merger between SBC and AT&T, and then took over BellSouth again. He has come close to re-assembling the original AT&T. He leaves with a $158.5 million retirement package.

Over the last two years, AT&T's share price is up almost 70%. The merger with BellSouth has gone well. AT&T's first-quarter 2007 reported net income was $2.8 billion, up from $1.4 billion in the first quarter of 2006, and reported earnings per diluted share were $0.45, versus $0.37 in the year-earlier quarter. The company's wireless operations, renamed AT&T Wireless, did particularly well.

One question will dog Whitacre's legacy. It is whether he moved quickly enough into fiber-based high speed internet to take TV and broadband customers away from cable companies. Cable has been converting large numbers of telecom voice customers to VoIP.

But, that is Stephenson's problem now.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

AT&T gets a new captain originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.