Profile: AT&T Inc. (T.N)

AT&T Inc. (AT&T), incorporated in 1983, is a communications holding company. Its subsidiaries and affiliates, AT&T operating companies, are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and around the world. Their offerings include Internet protocol (IP)-based business communications services, third generation (3G) network and wireless coverage worldwide, and Internet access and voice services. Its offerings also include directory publishing and advertising sales of its Yellow Pages and YELLOWPAGES.COM organizations. The Company operates in four business segments: wireless, wireline, advertising solutions and other. In September 2009, the Company acquired Plusmo, Inc., a provider of cross-platform mobile application solutions. In October 2009, the Company announced the acquisition of VeriSign's global security consulting business. In November 2009, the Company completed its acquisition of Centennial Communications Corp.

Wireless

Wireless consists of the Company’s subsidiary, AT&T Mobility, which operates as a wireless provider to both business and consumer customers. During the year ended December 31, 2008, the wireless segment provided approximately 39% of the total segment revenues and 46% of the total segment income. The Company offers a range of wireless voice communications services in a range of pricing plans, including postpaid and prepaid service plans. The voice offerings are tailored to meet the communications needs of targeted customer segments, including youth, family, active professionals, small businesses, government and national corporate accounts.

The voice service is offered on a contract basis for one or two year periods, referred to as postpaid. The wireless services include basic local wireless communications service, long-distance service and roaming services. Additionally, the Company offer offer prepaid service to meet the demands of distinct consumer segments, such as the youth market, families and small business customers, who prefer to control usage or pay in advance. The Company sells a range of handsets and personal computer wireless data cards manufactured by various suppliers for use with the voice and data services. It also sell accessories, such as carrying cases, hands-free devices, batteries, battery chargers and other items, to consumers, as well as to agents and other third-party distributors for resale.

Wireline

The wireline provide both retail and wholesale communication services domestically and internationally. The wireline segment provided approximately 55% of 2008 segment operating revenues and 47% of the 2008 total segment income. The wireline services are divided into three product categories: voice, data and other.

Voice includes traditional local and long-distance service provided to retail customers and wholesale access to the network and individual network elements. During 2008, the wireline subsidiaries served approximately 31 million retail customer access lines, 22 million retail business access lines and three million wholesale access lines. It also have a number of integrated voice and data services, such as integrated network connections, that provide customers the ability to integrate access for their voice and data services, the data component, which is included in the data category.

Long distance consists of traditional long distance and international long distance for customers that select the Company as their primary long-distance carrier. Long distance also includes services provided by calling card, 1-800 services and conference calling. These services are used in a range of business applications, including sales, reservation centers or customer service centers. AT&T also provides wholesale switched access service to other service providers. Voice also includes calling features, fees to maintain wire located inside customer premises and other miscellaneous voice products. Calling features are improved telephone services available to retail customers, such as caller identification (ID), call waiting and voice mail.

Data includes traditional products, such as switched and dedicated transport, Internet access and network integration, and data equipment sales. Additionally, data products include high-speed connections, such as private lines, packet, dedicated Internet and enterprise networking services, as well as products, such as domain specific language (DSL)/broadband, dial-up Internet access and wireless fidelity (WiFi). AT&T also provides businesses voice applications over IP-based networks, including enhanced virtual private networks (EVPN). The Company has built out new multi protocol label switching/asynchronous transfer mode, or multiprotocol label switching/ asynchronous transfer mode (MPLS/ATM) network, to supplement, and eventually replace, the other global data networks. These products allow to provide highly complex global data networks.

Private line uses digital circuits to transmit from point-to-point in multiple configurations and allows customers to create internal data networks and to access external data networks. Switched transport services transmit data using switching equipment to transfer the data between multiple lines before reaching its destination. Dedicated transport services use a single direct line to transmit data between destinations. DSL is a digital modem technology that converts existing twisted-pair telephone lines into access paths for multimedia and high-speed data communications to the Internet or private networks. DSL allows customers to simultaneously make a phone call and access information via the Internet or an office local area network. Digital Services use dedicated digital circuits to transmit digital data at various high rates of speed. Network integration services include installation of business data systems, local area networking and other data networking offerings. Internet access services include a range of products for residences and businesses, Internet services offered include basic dial-up access service, dedicated access, Web hosting, e-mail and high-speed access services.

Enterprise networking services provide support from network design, implementation and installation to ongoing network operations and management for networks of varying scales, including local area networks, wide area networks, and virtual private networks. These services include applications, such as e-mail, order entry systems, employee directories, human resource transactions and other database applications. The Company also provides local, interstate and international wholesale networking capacity to other service providers.

The other services include managed Web hosting, application management, security service, integration services, customer premises equipment, outsourcing, directory and operator assistance services, government-related services, and the U-verse and satellite video services. The Web hosting services for businesses provide network, server and security infrastructure, as well as built-in data storage and include application performance management, database management, hardware and operating system management. The hosting services also provide customers with secure access to detailed reporting information about their infrastructure and applications. Security services include business continuity and disaster recovery services, as well as premise and network based security products. Customer premises equipment and other equipment sales range from single-line and cordless telephones to the digital private branch exchange (PBX) systems. PBX is a private telephone switching system, typically used by businesses and usually located on a customer’s premises, which provides intra-premise telephone services, as well as access to the network.

Advertising Solutions

The advertising solutions segment includes the directory operations, which publish yellow and white pages directories and sell directory advertising and Internet-based advertising and local search. The advertising and publishing segment provided approximately 4% of total segment operating revenues and 7% of the 2008 total segment income. This segment sells advertising services throughout the United States, with the print directory operations primarily covering the 22-state area.

Other

The other segment includes operations from Sterling, the business integration software and services subsidiary, corporate and other operations. The other segment provided approximately 2% of total segment operating revenues and less than 1% of the 2008 total segment income. AT&T also includes in this segment the equity income (loss) from the investments in Telmex, America Movil and Telmex Internaccional. Sterling provides multi-enterprise collaboration services to businesses in various industries, including retail, financial services, manufacturing, healthcare and telecom.