Baby Bells slashing rates to keep or reacquire customers, prompting competitors to cry foul.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) — Local phone service providers known as «Baby Bells» are cutting prices for residential customers in an effort that competitors say amounts to unfair competition, according to a published report.
The Wall Street Journal reports that companies such as SBC Communications Inc., BellSouth Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. are trying to woo back local phone customers by making low-cost offers at the same time they are seeking permission to charge higher rates to other phone companies that want to compete for those customers.
The paper says that offers include introductory rates of $7.95 a month for unlimited local phone service or $100 checks to switch phone companies.
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Mexico City — Latin America’s richest man, Carlos Slim, owns so many companies that Mexico often seems like «Slim World» — and the magnate’s influence is so pervasive that it will probably endure, even as he gives up board positions and hands control of his companies to his sons.
Diners at one of Slim’s hundreds of chain restaurants can use a Slim wireless service to connect to Slim’s Internet provider to do online banking at Slim’s bank, or pay off credit cards for Slim’s department stores.
Outside in the street, vendors in jump suits bearing the name of Slim’s cell phone company — Mexico’s largest — sell prepaid phone cards to passers-by. Slim’s Telefonos de Mexico, or Telmex, also controls about 95 percent of fixed phone lines. Other street vendors sell Slim cigarette brands.
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ATLANTA, Aug. 3
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AT&T today announced it has secured a
three-year, $2.25 million contract with Imerys to provide an Internet Protocol
(IP)-based data and voice networking solution. Imerys is a world leader in adding value to minerals, and is active in 37 countries through approximately 290 industrial and commercial sites.
The solution connects approximately 50 Imerys sites using AT&T’s Global Managed Internet Service (GMIS). The network enables Imerys to share its mining management systems in real-time among its locations, allowing them to efficiently operate mines and provision resources.
AT&T’s networking solution enables Imerys engineers around the world to work collaboratively on a real-time basis and improve the company’s mine management processes. For example, it allows them to work from a shared database to model mining sites, view and analyze three-dimensional geologic cross-sections, and jointly decide how best to manage the mining process.ñãå
Imerys will deploy Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) among its 30 U.S. locations, which improves communication efficiencies and lowers network maintenance expenses by allowing voice, data and fax traffic to travel across a single, unified network. AT&T’s IP-based network supports class-of-service transport, which gives priority to applications such as voice and video that must be delivered in real-time to ensure high-quality communications. AT&T recently announced plans to accelerate expansion of its business VoIP service portfolio, giving companies unprecedented choices and flexibility to meet their VoIP networking convergence requirements.
«AT&T’s networking solution is flexible and reliable, and it’s our goal to bring cost-effective and innovative solutions to all aspects of our business operations,» said Errol Correa, chief information officer of Imerys. «Our network has grown along with the business, so it’s important that we use a data networking solution that delivers enhanced performance and the capabilities we need.»
AT&T also provides Imerys with local, long-distance and international voice service, and audio and video teleconference services. AT&T recently received an award for business local phone service customer satisfaction from J. D. Power and Associates. Local voice business customers ranked AT&T highest in a number of key areas -- offerings and promotions, cost of service, performance and reliability, sales representatives billing, and company image.
To close the sale, AT&T worked closely with Solarcom, a technology consultant and AT&T Alliance Channel agent based in the greater metro Atlanta area. AT&T Alliance Channel agents complement and enhance AT&T’s capabilities with specialized skills in network design and deployment, applications integration and communications equipment expertise.
SANDY SHORE
Associated Press
DENVER — Qwest Communications reported a wider second-quarter loss Tuesday, citing lower local telephone service sales and costs associated with ongoing litigation and job cuts. Shares in Qwest plunged 20 percent.
For the April-June quarter, Qwest posted a net loss of $776 million, or 43 cents per share, compared with a loss of $64 million, or 4 cents a share, in the second quarter of 2003. Revenue totaled $3.4 billion, down 4.3 percent from $3.6 billion reported in the same time period a year ago.
Qwest chief financial officer Oren Shaffer said the growth in key areas, such as DSL and long distance services, was offset by competitive pricing pressure and access line losses.
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M5 Networks Adds Over 600 Cisco Phone Users in June 2004
NEW YORK(BUSINESS WIRE)Aug. 3, 2004--M5 Networks, the Northeast’s leading provider of outsourced IP phone systems, today announced that it had added a record number of Cisco phone users to its customer list in June 2004. New customers included the Betty Cuningham Gallery, an art gallery in Manhattan that will be reopening in September, Interstate Financial Group, a full-service financial planning firm in Hartsdale, NY, and multiple office locations for InsPara Networking Technologies, an IT consulting firm headquartered in Cranford, NJ with a second office in Manhattan.
«Our existing customer base is clear evidence of our leadership position in this market and we’re aggressively pursuing additional customers to maintain our profitable growth, especially as some competing providers withdraw from the New York City market,» said Dan Hoffman, CEO and President of M5 Networks. «After working for four years to build a business model and infrastructure to handle the type of growth predicted by analysts for our market, we are pleased to see that the growth curve for this technology is significantly accelerating in New York’s small business market.»
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