AT&T BusinessDirect Celebrates 10th Anniversary

AT&T’s Award-winning Customer Portal Continues Its Industry-leading Innovations

Dallas, Texas.- The year was 1999 and the new economy of the World Wide Web was roaring. Venture capitalists were chasing any company with a “dot com” in its name to claim a piece of the Web’s $15 billion in consumer online sales and $131 billion in online business-to-business services. The Pets.com sock puppet had its own balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. By year’s end, 17 Internet companies lined up to spend over $2 million each for a 30-second ad at the coming Super Bowl.

Also that year, AT&T* moved AT&T BusinessDirect®, its customer self-maintenance tool, from the mainframe to the Internet where it became the telecom industry’s first truly Web-based “eMaintenance” portal.

A decade later, four of the ten most popular Web sites are devoted to social networking; online retail sales are approaching $235 billion; and AT&T BusinessDirect has become an award-winning portfolio known for its industry-leading innovations in network monitoring and management services, customer support and eCommerce.

AT&T BusinessDirect today helps hundreds of thousands of users in over 90 countries manage their network services online to improve productivity, increase the speed and accuracy of their network transactions and optimize network efficiency, all while reducing costs. Each month, AT&T BusinessDirect handles almost 4 million customer transactions that include ordering services, maintenance requests and billing inquiries. What’s more, the service today offers mobility features enabling remote workers and employees on the go stay connected with customers and co-workers to resolve problems even when they’re not at their desk.

To celebrate its tenth anniversary, AT&T added two tools to its AT&T BusinessDirect portfolio designed to enhance customers’ network management capabilities and perform administrative tasks quickly and securely. AT&T View and Analyze Inventory is an online tool that helps customers track current and pending service orders worldwide for a real-time view of changes in network assets such as circuits, facilities, routers, as well as other AT&T services. AT&T BusinessDirect eForums is its new online community where users can go to share their experiences, tips and best practices with other AT&T BusinessDirect customers, as well as post questions or engage in online chats.

“For 10 years, AT&T BusinessDirect has been setting the pace for the industry in providing online self-service tools, and we are committed to remaining the leader for the next decade,” said John Cushman, Vice President — eSales & Service, AT&T Business Solutions. “Business has become a 24-by-7-by-365 proposition, and customers need their electronic storefront always available. AT&T BusinessDirect enables customers to manage and monitor their network proactively all day, every day, from anywhere.”

AT&T BusinessDirect has won Stevie Awards in each of the past three years, including a Stevie Award in February 2009 for “Best use of Technology. Most recently, it received the ”2009 Excellence Award for Best Customer Care Solution" from Billing & OSS World magazine.

For more information on the AT&T BusinessDirect® 10th anniversary, please visit http://www.att.com/bd10th/.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T, Inc.