AT&T combines wireline, wireless for business

AT&T today unveiled new integrated offers that let businesses of all sizes order both wireline and wireless services from a single point of contact and at greater volume discounts. The services include both voice and data offerings and promise ease-of-use for businesses whose employees are often mobile.

“Our customers are asking us to make it easier, in all segments, small to large, and more straight-forward, to acquire wireline and wireless services, to make use of those services, both voice and data, and to manage those services,” said Bill Archer, AT&T senior vice president of product management. “We know what we are offering here will be well received.”

The integrated offers allow mid-sized and large businesses to buy wireline and wireless services and devices from a single point of contact, as AT&T unifies its sales force. By mid-2007, the services will be on a single contract, the company said. In addition, customers will now receive volume discounts on their wireline services that take their wireless calling volume into account, and will receive on-net rates on calls between AT&T’s Business Network and the wireless handsets.

“Customers will find it more cost-effective to buy in bundles, not only because they’ll be able to aggregate their spending but also because it will make it easier for them to manage the array of capabilities they have in use, wireline and wireless, and in today’s business climate, reducing complexity of management and administration is always more cost-effective,” Archer said.

A special Small Business Offer offers a quad play--local and long-distance voice, data and wireless service--in AT&T’s 22-state local footprint. In addition, all business customers can now buy the full range of wireless services and devices.

On the data side, AT&T will allow customers to access corporate virtual private networks using cellular data services, either via a Wi-Fi hotsport or AT&T’s wireless data service.

“Before this announcement, we enabled a customer to remotely access a VPN network using dial, broadband and Wi-Fi, and with the addition of this announcement, they can use cellular so the customer has a wide set of choices,” Archer said.

AT&T will provide a piece of software, the AT&T Global Network Client, that is loaded onto a laptop.

“What you do with this client, which has embedded security in it and can be configured in a way to choose the best method of connection without them invoking it, is use it as a portal,” he explained. “You point to cellular – it knows that the cell-card is plugged into PC, executes the connection and go through normal log-in procedures to get into corporate network and there you are. It is very simple and the interface is very friendly and easy to use.”

AT&T also is offering wireless back-up services as a business continuity tool for smaller outposts of larger corporation that today might rely on dial-up or ISDN lines as a backup to DSL lines, Archer said.