Building on basics, AT&T bases data service strategy on brand name, products >BY Beth Snyder, Associate Editor-News

Traditionally, AT&T has sold data services piece by piece: The company would create new products, announce them, sell them to businesses and let the customer determine how to build networks around them.

But during the past two years, company officials began to realize that many customers wanted more.

"We've always been product-focused, with the products being the best we could make them," said David Rush, information director for AT&T Business Information Solutions. "Now we are focusing on trying to be in the right relationship with customers.

In the evolving data market, issues such as dependability, reliability and the buildout of larger and more complex networks have become increasingly important to customers, Rush said. Most of the time they need more than just good products.

So more than a month ago, AT&T rolled out its new Internet services division designed to offer solutions, service and management capabilities along with equipment. Last week, the company realigned three other divisions to round out its data solutions package. Data Network Services will encompass traditional sales of high-performance products; Remote Access Solutions will include ISDN, wireless and intranet services; and Managed Network Solutions will focus on managing and supporting customer networks and AT&T solutions.

"We're trying to position ourselves-based on customers' responses-where they want us to be," Rush said. "This is not a new strategy. This is something we've evolved to.

Along with the business unit name changes, AT&T officials also looked at the names of all the services in each of those units and decided to rename most of them, getting rid of brand names like AccuWAN and InterSpan in favor of simpler names. For example, Accunet Service will now be called AT&T Private Line Service, and InterSpan ATM Service is now just AT&T ATM Service.

"In the past, [AT&T has] offered packages or services that haven't been described well by their names," said Amy White, an analyst with IDC, Framingham, Mass. "So it makes it easier for businesses to see what they're getting just by AT&T changing the names."

The reorganization also makes it easier for customers to choose a level of service and decide how much or little they want AT&T to be involved, she said.

"It's a much more hands-on approach," White said. "Companies can go to them and say, 'This is what our company needs. Can you provide it?' "

In the process of reorganizing and aligning services, AT&T found a few gaps where it could offer service. So in addition to the strategy introduction, the company also created several new services. Both CO FRAD and Managed FRAD services offer new options to frame relay users that fall between AT&T's existing offers of only equipment at the low end and managed router service at the high end.

With CO FRAD, the frame relay access device resides in AT&T's central office and can be used to build permanent virtual circuits for point-to-point, backup or global service. Managed FRAD service means AT&T provides and installs the equipment and manages a customer premises FRAD and multiprotocol private-line service-up to one local area network and four other protocols.

FRAME RELAY COMPRESSION ADDS FLEXIBILITY Paradyne and Compression Communications Corp. rolled out the 9028 Compression Unit to add frame relay payload compression support to central frame relay sites. The new equipment works with Paradyne's 9120 T-1 Frame Relay Access Unit to deliver compression and management solutions, specifically for critical frame relay networks supporting multiple remote sites. EXPANDING ATM DEAL Fore Systems and Cabletron Systems have extended their existing reseller agreement up to 2002. Under the deal, which started in 1992, Fore's asynchronous transfer mode switch technology is combined with Cabletron's ATM access products. IXC COMPLETES BACKBONE IMPROVEMENTS MCI finished a $60 million upgrade to its Internet backbone, quadrupling its speed from 155 Mb/s to 622 Mb/s and adding 13,000 ports to accommodate Internet service demand. With its Internet traffic growing by 30% each month, MCI plans another upgrade in 1997 to double its overall backbone capacity.