AT&T touts global expansion

AT&T today announced further expansion of its global network including expansion into China that includes interconnection agreements with China Telecom and China Netcom.

In a global press teleconference, AT&T Sales President Chris Rooney said the company has invested $10 billion over the past four years in expanding its global reach and is now going into China, Croatia, Cyprus, Ecuador, India, Malaysia, Qatar, Panama and United Arab Emirates, as well as establishing new interconnections within Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and the U.K.

The goal is an AT&T-owned network that “gives us strong competitive advantage in the global market,” Rooney said.

As part of that expansion, AT&T will have more than 15,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in 36 countries by year’s end, as well as 1700 wired Ethernet locations. It is trialing WiMAX in the U.S. and will expand those trials, Rooney said.

“The first requirement of global customers is that of reach--being where they want us to be when they want us to be there,” he said. “You must be where your customers are or where they want to go. We have been investing steadily in our own global infrastructure and the service portfolio that rides on that infrastructure to the point that our dedicated MPLS network has more than 1500 service nodes in 80 countries. We also have remote access that extends our reach to 148 countries.”

Rooney cited Equant (now part of France Telecom), BT, SingTel and NTT as global competitors, avoiding mention of other U.S. service providers.

AT&T has invested in its own MPLS backbone network to provide its global customers with a consistent experience that isn’t dependent on partner networks, Rooney said, although the company is using local service providers for interconnections within countries.

Within China, for example, the interconnections with China Netcom and China Telecom extend AT&T’s reach into hundreds of villages with that country, Rooney said.

“We have seen global networks put together based solely on alliances and partnerships,” he said. “But the key customer demand for core capability around their IP infrastructure is consistency worldwide and the seamless knowledge that they will be able to deploy applications around the world and have the same experience.

“We will use interconnects in many countries to provide that in-country depth, like China Netcom and China Telecom, to get to hundreds of locations where the local provider is best suited,” Rooney commented.

Some of the $10 billion investment has gone into back-office systems and into locally based personnel to provide sales and support, he said.