AT&T to Invest $1 Billion in Global Network, Services for Businesses in 2009

AT&T Accelerating Delivery and Management of On-Demand Network Applications

AT&T* today announced plans to invest approximately $1 billion in 2009 to continue building out its global network, while driving new services and network-based applications to businesses ranging from the largest multi-national corporations around the world to the smallest companies served within the United States.

AT&T's investment is focused on the network infrastructure, services and support for companies requiring "anytime, anywhere" access to the systems, suppliers, customers and employees needed to successfully run their businesses. Spurred by continued demand for business applications made possible by the proliferation of high speed communication networks and mobile devices worldwide, the '09 program includes:

Applications — Delivery and support of network-based, on-demand applications — such as managed hosting, content delivery and management and telepresence.
Mobility Offers and Applications — Rapid roll-out of mobility solutions and applications to businesses of all sizes.
IBM — The continued integration of IBM's global network operations under the two companies' expanded agreement.
Global Network — The continued build out of AT&T's global network to deliver services and applications to the markets and geographies where multinational companies today are doing business and/or housing their operations.
"With today's announcement, AT&T is making good on its commitment to provide companies with the network-driven capabilities and applications they need to successfully compete in a difficult economic environment," said Ron Spears, President and CEO of AT&T Business Solutions.

"Regardless of size, the companies that seize the power of IP technology and services to transform their businesses, are the companies that will be best-positioned to lead the global recovery," he added.

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 (VPNs) and managed applications.

Including this year's planned investment, AT&T will have invested more than $3 billion since 2006 in business-focused network, systems and applications to provide a globally consistent set of robust and secure services to the more than 3 million companies it serves.

The 2009 investment plan detail:

Network-Based Services and Applications:

Enhancements and additions to AT&T's virtual private network portfolio, wide area network (WAN), telepresence, unified communications, hosting, applications performance, and digital media solutions, all of which helped to drive double-digit IP data growth as reported in AT&T's recent fourth quarter earnings.
AT&T Telepresence service availability in China in collaboration with local service providers, to extend AT&T's ability to connect different companies using the service.
Managed IP telephony & local area network (LAN) services in China, India, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Mexico.
In the hosting and utility computing space, AT&T is:
Increasing data center hosting capacity in Atlanta, Annapolis and the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area in the United States, as well as in Hong Kong, Tokyo and the United Kingdom globally. Today, AT&T manages data centers with more than 2.6 million square feet of secure hosting capacity in 10 countries.
Scaling the AT&T Synaptic HostingSM platform in our recently announced super IDCs in Singapore, Amsterdam and three sites within the United States.
Increasing the level of automation for delivering AT&T Synaptic Hosting services as we continue to drive down implementation cycle times for our customers.
Expanding application services in the super IDCs by enabling more on-net managed applications, such as Oracle and SAP.
Supporting more virtualized customer applications by expanding managed hosting services onto the client premises.
Extending the AT&T Intelligent Content Distribution Service reach into Mexico, and enhancing service in high growth areas such as Brazil, India and China. Plans also call for expansion of capacity in existing service countries and jurisdictions in Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan. This expansion will cover services such as Flash, Windows Media Format, Move Networks and Silverlight that support large file downloads and video formats. AT&T is also expanding its SSL security capabilities.
Mobility Services and Applications:

Accelerated deployment of mobile conferencing solutions, portal capabilities and business mobility applications for companies of all sizes in vertical industries like finance, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, education and government. AT&T is continuing its investment in platforms to support mobility application deployment including:
Location based services — field service automation and fleet management applications for enterprise customers, leveraging advanced location technologies, such as GPS and enhanced Cell-ID, backed up by privacy management, charging and deployment management platform.
AT&T Mobile Enterprise Applications platform for enterprises to efficiently and securely develop, deploy and support enterprise applications. This will build on AT&T's alliance with Antenna Software, and expand by adding business workflows that mobilize key enterprise processes.
Enterprise On Demand (EOD) — our service delivery platform for customers to flexibly self manage large wireless data deployments of specialized vertical devices. The EOD platform is widely used for machine-to-machine deployments. Example enhancements include expansion of Web Services Interfaces for continued automation.
External Access Gateway — a platform for third parties to use the AT&T network for network transactions such as network location based services queries.
Global management of multiple mobile operator contracts to support the wireless needs of multinational companies (i.e. order processing, invoicing).
Device protection and control and other security capabilities to ensure that companies can safely access applications and work tasks anytime, from any enabled device.
Fixed-mobile convergence capabilities, building on AT&T's Mobile Extension service announced earlier this year.
AT&T's business mobility services and applications will continue to be powered by the broadest wireless global coverage of any U.S. provider. AT&T has voice roaming available in more than 210 countries; access to e-mail, the Web and other data applications in more than 160 countries; and access to mobile broadband 3G networks in more than 65 countries. This is complemented by AT&T's expanding global WiFi footprint — now totalling more than 88,000 hotspots worldwide.

IBM Network Integration:

Continued integration of IBM's global network operations acquired through the 2007 expanded agreement with AT&T. AT&T and IBM have teamed together to deliver networking and computing technology and services to multinational companies. Through its agreement with IBM, AT&T last year added on-the-ground support and networking expertise in 48 countries worldwide, and closed more than a dozen new contracts.

Continued Global Network Expansion:

Deploying new subsea fiber optic cable capacity to Alaska, Australia, Asia Pac, India, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, and on trans-Atlantic routes to Europe. Today, AT&T has ownership interests in 83 subsea cable systems, covering 488,000 route miles. In total AT&T's network has over 888,000 route miles of fiber.
VPN services will be extended in an additional 18 countries, giving VPN access in a total of 149 countries worldwide.
Extending access options to additional countries in every global market so that by the end of the year:
VPN Ethernet access will be available in 38 countries increased from 34 today.
VPN DSL access will be available in 44 countries increased from 38 today.
VPLS access will be available in 31 countries increased from 15 today. AT&T's OPT-E-WANSM Ethernet Virtual Private LAN is the only certified, fully unified global carrier Ethernet service based on a seamless MPLS/VPLS infrastructure available with coverage in the US and worldwide.
IPv6 deployment — to meet the global requirements of governments and companies, AT&T is deploying a multi-year plan to deliver a full complement of IPv6 networking services that will also preserve customers' existing IPv4 investment.
Deploying new network capabilities:
AT&T Wavelength Private Line, a versatile, long-haul, monitored and managed service that can support multiple protocols that include gigabit Ethernet and 10 gigabit Ethernet LAN and WAN configurations.
Enhanced AT&T Ultravailable Network Services so that businesses can take advantage of network monitoring and management tool sets, expert support and visibility through AT&T BusinessDirect®.
AT&T plans to continue to grow global backbone capacity by 1) introducing new and faster 10 Gb edge equipment, 2) increasing backbone bandwidth and 3) adding more Cisco CRS1 routers on key routes.
Expanding network- and premises-based firewall capabilities, as well as the AT&T Internet Protect® suite of capabilities including My Internet Protect, Private Intranet Protect, and DDoS Defense to the Asia-Pacific region.
In its most recent report**, the market research firm Ovum concluded that AT&T has the most complete footprint for enterprise managed services contracts among the top five global service providers, and could be the fastest growing global service provider in 2009.

* AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

** Ovum, Enterprise Strategy Review: AT&T completes the deal, David Molony, Mike Sapien, Jan. 2009

Cautionary Language Concerning Forward-Looking Statements
Information set forth in this news release contains financial estimates and other forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. A discussion of factors that may affect future results is contained in AT&T's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. AT&T disclaims any obligation to update or revise statements contained in this news release based on new information or otherwise.