AT&T (T 1.36%) has a lot going for it, but at the same time, it's just not enough. Thankfully for its sake, it's one of the top two companies in a market where size really matters -- the U.S. telecom market. That fact alone gives it all kinds of flexibility to attack attractive opportunities in ways that smaller, poorer telecom players only wish they could.

One the other hand, its size, as is so often the case, also makes posting prodigious growth all the more difficult. It's also one of the most impressive dividend payers on the Dow. Taking all this into account, how should investors look at AT&T, especially at the levels it trades at today?