A story we never thought we’d write.

“Avid Communications is working closely with AT&T to serve our customers.”

Now that’s a line we never thought we’d write.

Avid founder Dave Scott has been in competition with AT&T for over 35 years now. At times it’s been a bitter fight. In the 1990s, Dave’s company Birch Telecom and AT&T waged war before state legislatures over whether anyone would even have the right to compete with AT&T to provide local phone service. Dave’s companies and AT&T would routinely face off in legislative committees and regulatory hearings.

In the late 1990s, Birch Telecom, ran billboards that said “100% of our customers fired Southwestern Bell” as AT&T was then known. Dave even met with Ed Whitacre, the legendary chairman of AT&T in his San Antonio office, where Whitacre asked, “If you and I are able to come to a business agreement, will you promise to take down those g** d*** billboards.”

But the world is a complex place. Avid is willing to go to just about any length to get the best bandwidth available for its customers. And AT&T has become much more aggressive at building fiber optic connections to businesses. AT&T is still the market leader by far, and the extent of its network reach is vast.

So perhaps it was just a matter of time.

Recently, Avid has become a member of AT&T’s partner program, giving it access to competitive pricing for fiber connections. Avid engineers have also worked with AT&T to put in place a BGP Peering connection, giving Avid clients a much more reliable network setup when using AT&T as the underlying carrier.

So though it took several decades, Avid and AT&T are now working together to serve clients with the best possible network bandwidth, security and voice services.