Five years ago, running a telephone company was an immensely profitable proposition. Since then, those profits have inexorably declined, and now that decline has taken another gut-wrenching dip.

On Oct. 1, both AT&T (nyse: T — news — people ) and Vonage, two pioneers in selling phone service over the Internet, announced price cuts in their new service, proving that the nascent service isn’t too young for a price war to break out.

AT&T cut the price of its voice-over-Internet Protocol service 14%, to $30 a month from $35. Vonage, a small, New Jersey-based company that has led the way in using VoIP as a replacement for residential phone lines, immediately responded in kind. It cut the price of its main service plan by $5, to $25 a month.

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BellSouth Celebrates A Tradition of Service Excellence; Works to Improve Level of Customer Service

ATLANTA, /PRNewswire/ BellSouth (NYSE: BLS — News) is celebrating the 16th Annual National Customer Service Week by recognizing its employees for the work they do to serve the company’s customers across the Southeast. National Customer Service Week, observed Oct. 4–8, recognizes the importance of customer service and honors the people on the front lines.

«BellSouth’s ability to meet customers’ high expectations for customer service starts with our people, who take tremendous pride in ensuring that we provide reliable voice, data and Internet services to residential and business customers across the Southeast,» said Dee Butler, vice president — Service Program Office for BellSouth. «This week is an opportunity to express our appreciation to our team members for their dedication to service.»

In addition to observing National Customer Service Week, the company will continue to honor its 2004 Presidential Honors Award winners -- those employees who have demonstrated exemplary service to business, residential, or wholesale customers. These employees have received BellSouth’s highest recognition under its Service Leader Program.

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Service is Latest Milestone in IP Strategy; Bundled with Unlimited Calling Plans

Consumers and small businesses today have a powerful new tool to help them better manage and more easily access their proliferating wireline and wireless voice mailboxes, e-mail accounts, and faxes.

SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC) today announced SBC Unified Communications(SM), a new service that harnesses the power of IP (Internet Protocol) to enable customers to gather all of their message services into one easy-to-use system. Rather than check multiple places for messages, customers with Unified Communications can take control of multiple message sources by accessing them through a single gateway.

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Unified Communications Lets Consumers, Small Businesses Use Web Portal or Phones to Manage Messages from Multiple Sources

Consumers and small businesses today have a powerful new tool to help them better manage and more easily access their proliferating wireline and wireless voice mailboxes, e-mail accounts, and faxes.

SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC) today announced SBC Unified Communications(SM), a new service that harnesses the power of IP (Internet Protocol) to enable customers to gather all of their message services into one easy-to-use system. Rather than check multiple places for messages, customers with Unified Communications can take control of multiple message sources by accessing them through a single gateway.

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DALLAS, /PRNewswire/ VarTec Telecom, Inc. announced today that
it is launching a new telecommunications brand, VarTec Solutions™, to meet
the long distance, local services, Internet and data demands of business customers throughout North America.

Along with its new brand identity, VarTec Solutions announced today the launch of its latest solution for business consumers -- Integrated Voice and Data service (or IVAD), which combines dedicated local dial tone, long distance and Internet data over a single connection. For as little as $525 per month, a business customer can receive six local business lines, long distance service and 512K dedicated Internet service. VarTec Solutions’ IVAD offers tremendous value and savings over many current offerings from other phone companies.

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