The whole killing off the Cingular brand is quite the confusing ordeal, involving names like SBC, BellSouth, and — of course — AT&T. There’s a lot of companies involved, and a whole lot of buying and selling. Luckily, Stephen Colbert took it upon himself to clarify the situation with an easy to follow flowchart. It’s easy to see how Cingular is turning into AT&T.

Okay, maybe not that easy, but one comment that Colbert makes that is particularly interesting relates to how AT&T became, well, AT&T again. To serve as background, the US government stepped in to prevent any sort of monopoly in the telecommunications industry, forcing AT&T to break into smaller companies, and, as a result, creating artificial competition. Well, that didn’t really pan out. Check out the video to see why.