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AT&T to Integrate Cingular Wireless into Bundled Services
By ROBERT LIU
TMCnet Wireless and Technology Columnist
Exactly one year after first announcing the merger of AT&T and SBC Communications, AT&T Inc. on Tuesday played host to investors, financial analysts and the media for a daylong meeting, announcing, among other things, that it will begin selling so-called “Quadruple Play” bundled services to enterprises under the AT&T brand.
Speaking at the meeting in New York, Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre Jr. and other key executives stated the AT&T-branded bundled services integrates the services of Cingular Wireless, which was partially owned by SBC, into AT&T’s legacy enterprise offerings to business customers.
The integrated bundle is an obvious example of the synergies made possible by the merger, which has been completed for 10 weeks now. It also addresses two of the four key priorities outlined by Whitacre et al., that AT&T intends to focus on during the coming year: 1) wireless; 2) business offerings, 3) next-generation broadband and IP services; and 4) aggressive cost reduction.
As a result, Whitacre updated AT&T’s projected cost savings expected from the merger synergies to a net present value of approximately $18 billion versus $15 billion from previous estimates. AT&T now expects total synergies from the merger to reach an annual run-rate approaching $3 billion in 2008.
The integrated Cingular Wireless solution will greatly help AT&T address customers’ needs because what the marketplace wants is bundled services, which in turn will help the overall business revenue to “stabilize and return to growth by 2008,” Randall Stephenson, chief operating officer at AT&T, said during his portion of the presentation.
The offering is timed to hit the market around the same time that competitors like Sprint will offer its Quadruple Play packages through its widely reported joint venture with four of the nation’s leading cable companies.
But while AT&T executives were quick to express their optimism about the upcoming solution Cingular President and CEO Stan Sigman was more lukewarm about the prospects, characterizing the offering as “incrementally positive” to Cingular’s business.
“We're excited about the new sales arm of AT&T that has joined our family. AT&T plans to sell Cingular wireless services as an integrated service,” Sigman said. “What's good for Cingular is good for AT&T.”
The offering will enable AT&T customers, for example, to remotely access corporate emails or roam internationally (because Cingular’s network is built using globally accepted GSM standards), Mark Keiffer, chief marketing officer for business products at AT&T Operations, emphasized to the crowd.
Yet even though the Triple Play bundle won’t be available until mid-2006, AT&T announced immediate availability of a managed service dubbed “AT&T Multi-Carrier Solutions” designed to help enterprises analyze and achieve the most cost-efficient and effective wireless services for their business needs.
This new service gives enterprise customers visibility and control of their wireless services and costs by providing a consolidated view of their wireless operations with the ability to monitor changes to usage and plans, Keiffer said.
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Robert Liu is Executive Editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was Executive Editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please visit Robert Liu's columnist page.
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