AT&T's Converged Future

Associate Editor,
Internet Telephony magazine

AT&T (News - Alert) CEO John Stankey, in his keynote address at GlobalComm (News - Alert) 2006, laid out the firm’s vision for its upgraded IP-MPLS network, which is set to begin this summer. Stankey stressed that AT&T’s work is part of its four-way strategy for helping its customers manage network convergence and to enable the latest in technology and services for both its business and consumer customers.

Of course, key to the project is making sure the proper infrastructure is in place, without which upgradeability and scalability become costly and difficult. Stankey noted that the combined resources of AT&T, Cingular (News - Alert), and Bell South — once the mergers have been completed later this year — will provide a complete wireless/wireline IP network that will enable the myriad enhanced services that will become available.

But the network infrastructure is only part of the picture. AT&T also is determined to ensure it’s customers have the tools to adequately deploy and manage the enhanced services a converged IP network will make possible. Key to that success, said Stankey, is providing the proper security, which AT&T plans to address with network-based security measures, which will ensure secure, flexible mobile access for users.

Perhaps most importantly, though, Stankey noted that the key to successfully providing any time anywhere access on any device is relationships. AT&T will seek to forge key relationships with application developers, access providers, systems integrators, and content providers to truly provide the omnipresent coverage today’s technology-enabled community demands.

“Relationships are critical to success in today’s mobile environment,” he stressed, explaining that no one provider has the tools, the technology, the content, or the access to solve every problem everywhere. From a business perspective, it also doesn’t make sense to duplicate efforts where a partnership is possible.

AT&T’s goal is to provide much more than simply Internet access and e-mail communication — with its IMS-enabled IP network, it wants to give its customers a complete communications and entertainment solution, with better access and more advanced services on via a backbone that is more scalable and flexible than has ever been seen. AT&T’s Project Lightspeed is its most aggressive vision yet, and will deliver a portfolio of integrated, digital TV, high speed Internet, and voice services.

But, as Stankey acknowledged, AT&T cannot stop here.

“Demands are only going to get more difficult as true convergence takes shape,” he said, and AT&T’s IMS deployment is intended to enable its vision of a truly converged communications future.

Network capabilities, strong relationships, and a viable, yet aggressive, business strategy will provide the stepping stones to the future.

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Erik Linask is Associate Editor of INTERNET TELEPHONY. Most recently, he was Managing Editor at Global Custodian, an international securities services publication. To see more of his articles, please visit Erik Linask’s columnist page.