AT&T Gets on a DSL Roll

AT&T Corp. (www.att.com) sped up the market rollout of its DSL Internet services and is launching several new features for this broadband offering.

The telecom giant plans to provide businesses with aggressive new price points, online ordering capabilities and DSL security solutions, as it attempts to become a single-vendor broadband solution, company executives say.

AT&T's Business DSL Internet service launched today in nearly 100 markets throughout the United States. AT&T also launched a suite of enterprise-class networking elements, including new broadband VPN services, hosting, and network-based firewall services.

"We've expanded our DSL service roughly twice as fast as originally planned," said Kathleen Earley, president of AT&T's Data and Internet services. "We've seen tremendous demand from businesses of all sizes for our DSL Internet Services."

AT&T's DSL Internet service allows customers to access audio, video and graphics over the Internet at download rates up to 50 times faster than a 28.8 Kbps modem. Highlights of AT&T's rollout and new features include:

· New Pricing for Single User Service --- Effective immediately, AT&T is increasing the speed and lowering the price of its single-user DSL Internet service. For example, its basic service provides users with speeds up to 608Kbps download and 128Kbps upload for $49.95 per month. Through Sept. 30, AT&T will waive the $300 installation fee for this and certain other services.

AT&T also announced today a new portfolio of enterprise-class networking elements to boost the security, scalability, and speed of its next generation business networks.

"AT&T is providing businesses with an unparalleled networking environment to augment the security and scalability of their Intranets, extranets and remote access VPNs," said Earley in a statement.

For businesses using frame relay networks to carry hosted applications, AT&T will help them connect their networks to AT&T Internet Data Centers (IDCs).

This means businesses will be able to terminate both private enterprise VPNs and Internet-based VPNs within these centers. This can benefit corporations interested in outsourcing hosted applications.

For small- to mid-sized businesses that want to extend the functionality of their DSL Internet connections, AT&T will offer them the ability to create IPSec-compliant broadband VPNs.

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