BEDMINSTER, N.J. -- AT&T today announced that the Yankee Group has named AT&T as the leading provider of wholesale services in the Yankee Group 2004 Wholesale Data Services Survey, a study conducted in September 2004 of wholesale vendors' overall reputations for excellence. 

The survey, which included feedback from 147 decision-makers with a direct role in purchasing wholesale services for their organizations, ranked wholesale providers in the areas of network performance, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), route redundancy, tech support, financial stability, provisioning time, network reach, pricing, billing accuracy, and reputation.

"AT&T earned the top reputation among buyers of wholesale services," said J. P. Gownder, Senior Analyst at the Yankee Group.  "The company scored 3.5 or higher among every buyer segment and came out with a market-leading reputation."

"AT&T continues to meet the needs of service providers worldwide by designing, developing and delivering a full portfolio of global voice, data and IP services," said Kathleen Flaherty, AT&T chief marketing officer.   "This award enhances AT&T's position as the partner of choice for companies migrating to a converged voice and data network.  It supports our efforts to establish business VoIP technology leadership on the basis of our world-class IP network, which delivers integrated services and unsurpassed client experience."

  "We are honored that AT&T Global Wholesale has been recognized by Yankee Group," said Kathryn Morrissey, president of AT&T Global Wholesale Services.  "AT&T's state of the art technology and its powerful global IP network let us offer an extensive portfolio of communications solutions with the breadth, reach, security and reliability to serve critical customer needs in the global wholesale market."

AT&T Global Wholesale serves the needs of wireless providers, cable providers, and systems integrators, as well as carriers both in the U.S. and globally.  AT&T offers world-class support, outstanding network performance, reliability and scalability.  The company's array of best-in-class services supports resale, enables network infrastructure build and delivers high-value applications services to enhance existing offer sets and strengthen internal operations.

AT&T's industry-leading SLAs are standard features of all of the AT&T Global Wholesale services.   AT&T has committed to service availability on an end-to-end basis, backing its guaranteed performance metrics with meaningful financial credits based on realistic and measurable thresholds. 

The company's wholesale capabilities span the full range of IP, data and voice services, including virtual private networks, managed security services -- such as AT&T Internet Protect -- and managed contact center services.   In addition, as wholesale customers are accelerating their move to VoIP, AT&T is supporting them with offers that facilitate the migration of their operations, infrastructure and services.  AT&T's VoIP-enabled network delivers key VoIP and IP telephony applications and provides IP and PSTN services to enable wholesale customers to offer next generation voice services.

The Yankee Group (http://www.yankeegroup.com)
The Yankee Group is the global leader in communications & networking research and consulting. The company helps businesses understand the opportunities, risks and competitive pressures of developing, deploying and consuming products and services that drive communication or information exchange. Now in its fourth decade, the Yankee Group is based in Boston with offices throughout North America and Europe.