April 6, 2010 – AT&T plans to invest approximately $1 billion in 2010 to scale its delivery of applications, mobility and cloud services for global companies, to expand small business services

April 6, 2010 – AT&T plans to invest approximately $1 billion in 2010 to scale its delivery of applications, mobility and cloud services for global companies, to expand small business services within the United States and to continue extending its network globally.

The 2010 investment program for businesses is part of AT&T’s overall existing capital plan.  With business customers seizing the opportunities created by the continued proliferation of high speed communication networks and mobile computing devices worldwide, AT&T’s 2010 program includes:

• Scaling Application Services – enhancing AT&T’s current portfolio of flexible collaboration services and applications such as managed hosting, cloud-based services, Telepresence, Unified Communications, Digital Media Solutions and security.
• Enterprise Mobility Applications – continuing AT&T’s focus on delivering mobile solutions, applications and integrated devices to companies of all sizes.  This includes continued investment in LTE- and Wi-Fi-based applications to support the dramatic increase in demand for mobile broadband-based services.
• Vertical Industry Focus – creating and deploying applications in the finance, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, education and government sectors, expanding its presence in emerging applications including markets such as machine-to- machine communication and rolling out fixed mobile convergence and location based solutions, along with mobile platform and portal enhancements.
• Enhancing Small Business – deploying platforms and systems across its 22-state U.S. footprint to deliver an enhanced customer experience and to accelerate the provisioning of multiple products and services.  AT&T also plans to increase broadband speeds up to 24 Mbps downstream where possible in more than 120 markets across AT&T’s 22-state U.S. footprint.
• Global Network Expansion – continuing to build out its global network to deliver services and applications to the markets and geographies where multinational companies today are doing business and/or housing their operations. The AT&T network now reaches countries that represent 99% of the global economy.

“Despite the continuing challenges of today’s economic environment, we continue to deliver on our commitment to provide companies with the network-centric capabilities and applications they need to enhance their operations,” said Ron Spears, President and CEO of AT&T Business Solutions.  “IP-based solutions and applications have become ever more important to companies aiming to take their productivity to a new level while transforming their operations to adapt to their customers’ changing needs.”
Including this year’s planned investment, AT&T will have invested more than $4 billion since 2006 in business-focused network, systems and applications to provide a globally consistent set of robust and highly-secure services to the more than 3.5 million business customers it serves.

AT&T is capitalizing on the ongoing shift in network traffic from voice to data and video — and more importantly to IP-based data and video — as customers migrate from legacy data networks to MPLS-based virtual private networks and managed applications.