AT&T Announces U.S. Availability of Internet Protocol Toll-Free Services for Businesses

Innovative Convergence of Voice and Data Delivers Advanced Services.
AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) today announced its advanced Internet Protocol (IP) Toll-Free service allowing business customers to efficiently manage and intelligently route calls using some of the most powerful advanced features in the industry.

Initially available to U.S. customers, the new service includes one of the most robust set of toll-free features in the industry, including announcement options, routing management and reporting features. Customers will be able to bolster the efficiency and capabilities of toll-free-number services used in contact centers, teleconferencing, voice messaging and other critical toll-free applications.

As businesses continue to migrate their voice services to advanced IP networks so as to take advantage of the significant cost savings made possible by convergence trends, they can use AT&T IP Toll-Free service to intelligently route calls to both traditional and IP-based customer equipment. This hybrid network environment allows customers to migrate their traditional circuit-switched-based call center and other applications to advanced IP-based infrastructures at their own pace. AT&T can also now provide AT&T IP Toll-Free to AT&T wholesale customers for use in their own, large call centers, supporting their evolution to the contact center of the future.

According to IT market research and advisory firm IDC, the need for call centers to protect the investments they have already made in their calling infrastructure is increasingly important.

“While the need for advanced IP toll-free calling services continues to expand, most businesses are unable to leverage the benefits of advanced calling features, given the limitations of their current data networks,” said Will Stofega, IDC Research manager of VOIP Services. “The communications service providers that can provide these features to customers regardless of their current network infrastructures are poised for long-term success.”

Later in 2007, AT&T plans to introduce Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based advanced routing functionality, including IP Transfer Connect Service. SIP-based technology allows for call transfers to take place either before or after calls are answered.

In addition, enhanced information delivery allows more data to be delivered to the transferring party or forwarded to the final called party. These capabilities are designed to further improve the call-handling efficiency and resource optimization and, as a result, further reduce the customer’s cost structure.

Note: This AT&T release and other news announcements are available as part of an RSS feed at www.att.com/rss.