A fat dividend to consider

You might think of AT&T (NYSE:T) as just a phone company, but it’s much more, offering cell phone service, internet service, satellite and streaming television service — and content.

The telecom giant’s stock was recently down about 15 percent over the previous five years, underperforming the S&P 500’s gain of more than 50 percent over the same time frame. It has been struggling with an ongoing loss of pay TV subscribers, tough competition in the wireless market and a massive debt load from its acquisitions of DirecTV, AWS-3 spectrum licenses and Time Warner.

The stock’s lower price has pushed up its dividend yield, which was recently a whopping 7 percent. And the payout is reliable, as AT&T has raised its dividend annually for 36 consecutive years.