At&T Analysis Via The Value Framework

Summary:

Over the last 120 years the telecommunications industry has witnessed many world-changing events-the deployment of telephones (which surpassed telegraph in terms of business impact) then radio, television, and now the Internet. During this timeframe, AT&T-the oldest telecommunications firm still in business today- was reorganized following the break up of the Bell System, and has since re-risen to become one of the top three global telecommunications firms.

AT&T is transitioning from phone to data to managed networks in a progression that increasingly adds value to communication transactions. It has not been an easy road, especially the last five years, which proved investment in Internet properties, including Excite@Home, to be costly mistakes. None-the-less, AT&T has kept focus on providing first class consumer and business communications services, extending and leveraging Internet, wireless, and broadband technologies into managed personal and business communication services.

In strategy evolved, AT&T has created a vision of the next 25 years as a provider of global telecommunications networks, delivering voice, data, broadband, and horizon technologies to both consumers and businesses. With businesses requiring secure dedicated channels and data becoming increasingly more complex, AT&T is currently focusing its efforts on building robust business networks for SME and Fortune 5000 firms. As the telecommunications vertical remains the most impacted by disruptive and innovative technologies, AT&T remains competitive through key alliances with value-added and managed service providers (MSPs), including data center and hosting services that extend the business benefit of the network.

The rumors of AT&T's death have been greatly exaggerated, and more likely the opposite has been predicted to come true. Analysts suggest we will witness the rebirth of a better, stronger, but more compact AT&T. In strategy evolved, AT&T balances investment in, and management of, 21st century innovation with alliances in network born business service providers, to increasingly extend wireless and broadband into sophisticated consumer products.

Strategy Evolved:

The challenge for AT&T is to create a vision of the next 5, 10 and 25 years in markets where advances in telecommunications, computation, and services continue to converge. A vision to locate servers and managed applications along the network (Forrester's eXt model) easing "edge of network" congestion allows customers to specify speed, access, and choice of business applications, in addition to quality of service.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) evolved to support choice of communications protocols, and how business customers require their communication transactions to occur. Businesses will use these applications long enough to talk to their business partners, dismantle the application, come back, and use another type of application and communication with another business partner, while paying only for the amount that they're using. Network born Managed Service Providers (MSPs) facilitate both "build" and "use on demand" as these applications are located "on the network" today instead of "at the network edge" where it is cost prohibitive for the business customer.

As a strategy, AT&T must walk a delicate edge of managed high value networks for traditional and commerce enabled applications on the one side, and alliances with application vendors, data centers, and managed service providers on the other. Being careful to avoid the investment temptation that was just as appealing with Excite@Home. AT&T can provide dedicated network infrastructure to key ASPs, thus competing with Digex and Qwest, where the latter have already begun to offer specialized premium and value added network services.

Bundling will be key, as businesses in the short term look to aggregate local and long distance costs with one-rate offering, and move to IP based fax. In the longer term, complete outsourcing of large LAN and WAN infrastructure will be very appealing to SMEs, which need to control both rising voice communication and exponential growth of wireless access from mobile users and legacy.

As the middle market (SMEs) move to the ASP model, AT&T alliances with network based MSPs will forge new opportunities as those networks begin to resemble IP VANs, with VPN being the norm. As a middle term strategy, AT&T strategy to support trading network infrastructure, following the lead of General Electric's exchange services (GXS) and IBM's trading network would create the scaffolding for global trading networks, keeping AT&T well within their core competency of secure WANs with VPN security. AT&T's unfair competitive advantage is it's relationship with small business, and as a brand that small business can trust, enabling Web based EDI or simple supply chain management at a fraction of the cost of larger providers. Here an alliance with UPS, a provider of logistics and supply chain management systems, would be a logical step in managing strategy towards business networks, especially from the lower market upwards, where it has no immediate competition.

AT&T's vision:

* Create global business networks

* Increase overall MSP capabilities

* Build alliances with MSPs along network, some of those alliances may be with trading networks (compete against GSX)

* Become a global brand and compete against Qwest / Level 3

* Create a "one pipe" strategy for business voice, data, and application services

* Blend service offerings with multi-protocol support so that business, not AT&T, design transport options

* Offer consumers more evolved and high value services

* Be a player in B2B, B2M, and M2M transaction networks

* Facilitate "build and use on demand" B2B applications

* Wireless markets may be most lucrative with the 1 billion worldwide wireless consumers

Strategy Managed:

Metrics for success are key to AT&T's managing both tactics and strategy during the difficult period of 2000 to 2005. This will arguably be the hardest single time period for telecommunications firms in the 21st Century. The strategy during this period required managing metrics of data service revenue, which