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Wednesday, November 23, 2005

 

AT&T will have to change its name to AIT&T

WSJ.com - In Risky Move, a New AT&T Bets on Internet Technology


An article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal announced that AT&T,the company that dominated the telephone industry for most of the 20th Century, is undergoing a digital revolution of its own. Ma Bell will have to add Internet to the Telephone and Telegraph in its name.

According to the WSJ, AT&T is
placing a risky bet that its future will depend on delivering content to television, wireless phones and computers on a network using Internet technology. In doing so, the merged company hopes to play a central role in the seismic changes under way in the media and telecom businesses.
Telephone landlines will no longer be the core of the telephone business for AT&T, now it's broadband delivery of all sorts of content. It is a risky bet because AT&T is not the only media giant competing for this market. Power companies, telephone companies, cable companies, satellite companies, and even Google seem to be vying to be your ISP. Here's what they plan to do:
A key to AT&T's new growth strategy is to deliver video, data, wireless calls and phone traffic over a single network to consumers and large corporate customers. AT&T executives say the technology will let it offer a new form of television with 1,000 or more channels available to consumers within the next 18 months. The company also plans to beam TV content to cellphones; offer targeted advertising on TV, much like Google offers on the Internet; and eventually provide thousands of programs and movies on demand. Yahoo Inc., which has been working on ventures with SBC since 2001, will work closely with AT&T in this effort and will help develop search technology and advertising
Ma Bell won't just be selling phone service, or music and movie/tv content on demand, they clearly want a piece of the internet advertising pie that companies like Google and Yahoo are gobbling up. The Wall Street Journal sums it up this way:
The new Ma Bell thus embarks upon the 21st century embroiled in a historic convergence of companies all diving into the same market. With voice, video and other kinds of information all transformed into digital data, a race is under way to sell consumers all of these services in one package.
One package for an ocean of information, images and music. Content on demand for the masses.

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