News Release

AT&T Charts A Networking Win With Good Samaritan

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. -- AT&T has won a $6.5 million, three-year networking contract from The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society to improve the performance and delivery of electronic computer applications across the geographically dispersed organization.

Good Samaritan is the nation's largest not-for-profit long-term care organization, with more than 240 centers in 25 states providing care to more than 27,000 residents.

AT&T's networking solution allows Good Samaritan caregivers to document residents' activities, schedules and pertinent medical information on personal digital assistants (PDAs) at the point of care in a timely manner. At the end of a shift, all the day's data can be downloaded to Good Samaritan's central server -- in less than one minute. The process used to take more than 30 minutes.

"AT&T's networking capabilities help us cut the amount of time our staff spends on data entry and administrative tasks, so they can spend more time caring for residents and providing them a richer, fuller life experience," said Rustan Williams, CIO of the Good Samaritan Society. "We're gaining network efficiencies and performance at a very reasonable cost. This is a great solution to meet our growing network demands."

The AT&T solution is based on Integrated Network Connection Service (INCS), a fully managed, integrated voice, data and Internet Protocol access service that allows more traffic to be carried on fewer lines via dynamic bandwidth allocation, thereby increasing capacity while holding down costs.

Good Samaritan's network is "future-proof," designed to interface with next-generation IP technologies.

About Good Samaritan

The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society is the nation's largest not-for-profit provider of senior care and services.  Good Samaritan has more than 240 care centers in 25 states.

About AT&T

For more than 125 years, AT&T (NYSE 'T') has been known for unparalleled quality and reliability in communications. Backed by the research and development capabilities of AT&T Labs, the company is a global leader in local, long distance, Internet and transaction-based voice and data services.