Number of our frame relay customers who moved to IP-based solutions reached 70% in 2009: AT&T GNS India

There is a gradual shift in network
traffic from voice to data and video — and more importantly IP-based
data and video. How would this shift impact your business opportunities
and strategies?

IP transformation is perhaps the most compelling part driving the
growth of our business. Companies are turning to IP-based virtual
private networks to achieve these goals. Due to its tremendous
flexibility and capacity, IP is ideal for delivering a wide range of
services and applications anytime, anywhere to any device. AT&T is
the clear leader among industry players in the IP space. We've helped
more companies make the transition to VPNs than anyone else. By the end
of 2009, the number of our frame relay customers who have transitioned
to IP-based solutions approached 70%.

The beauty of our position is that it gives us tremendous
opportunity to extend our business into new, network-adjacent service
areas and create more value for customers and shareholders. Developing
and providing application services on top of our IP network are key
opportunities for us. Our four areas of focus in business applications
are managed hosting, cloud-based solutions, security, and unified
communications, including Telepresence and digital media.

Having recently sold your stake in
Tech Mahindra, do you plan to vacate this space, or are you exploring
to grab this opportunity through some other routes?

The option exercise does not impact our commercial relationship.Tech
Mahindra is one of the vendors that provide IT services to AT&T.
This relationship offers us strategic advantages, and we plan to
continue to work with Tech Mahindra to meet AT&T's information
technology needs. In fact, AT&T honored Tech Mahindra with a 2010
AT&T Supplier Award, recognizing Tech Mahindra's outstanding
performance and service to AT&T affiliates during the past year.

How has the managed security business
in India turned out for you? Who are some of your big clients in this
space?

With AT&T Managed Security Services, customers get the benefits
of a suite of world-class security services that provide integrated
business continuity and security solutions to support their complex
networking environments. AT&T helps businesses design, deploy,
manage and evolve networks, systems and applications that are reliable
and contain security features designed to help protect against cyber
attacks and business interruptions.

Specifically, companies in India/their affiliates will now have access
to several of AT&T's leading managed security solutions:

• Premises-Based Firewall: A premises-based firewall service
  provides firewall protection at the perimeter of the customer's
  premises, and enforcement of location specific security policies.

• Network-Based Firewall: A network-based security service that
  protects customers' WANs by providing secure inbound and outbound
  internet access directly into the customer's WAN providing a consistent
  enforcement of security policies to all customer locations.

• AT&T Internet Protect: A security analysis and notification
  service that offers advanced information regarding potential near
  real-time attacks (eg, viruses, worms and distributed denial of service
  or DDoS attacks) that are designed to be detected in the early
  formation stages.

• AT&T Private Intranet Protect: An alerting and notification
  tool designed to analyze traffic on the user's Virtual Private Network
  (VPN) and help detect intrusions, cyber-attacks and other potentially
  threatening identified anomalies.

• My Internet Protect: A security knowledge mining, analysis and
  notification service for identified threats that enter a customer's
  network. It provides enterprise businesses with the tool to analyze and
  benchmark Internet traffic on their own network.

AT&T provides both network-based and premises-based security
solutions to its customers and their applications. The network-based
approach enables AT&T to efficiently and proactively manage network
security issues, redundancy, load balancing and recovery.
Alternatively, customers could also choose premises-based solutions to
enjoy the flexibility to host the infrastructure within their own
premises. Key customers using managed security services include
AT&T Williams team on a global basis.

What are the key trends that you see in network security in India?

According to Internet security firm Fortinet, India is one of the
top five Asian countries for malware by volume. We see that there is a
heightened appreciation of the need to create risk management
strategies that allow a firm to mitigate any threat to operational
integrity, not simply develop responses to threat. Many firms have been
focusing on disaster recovery strategies and how to operationalise the
strategies.

Additionally, many companies have started to realize the importance
and effectiveness of using an external service provider to manage the
security infrastructure, such as fighting spam and mitigating
vulnerabilities. To catch up with technology improvements, from time to
time, an outsourcing managed service vendor can provide leading-edge
and flexible technology on security solutions that allow the customers
to focus on their core businesses.

What is your enhancement plan on sub-sea cable systems?

In our global USD1 billion investment plan, AT&T plans to deploy
additional subsea cable capacity to ensure diversity and resilience
including 180G of new capacity into the Caribbean and South America,
over 350G of new capacity from the US to and within Asia Pacific
including India, 70G of capacity from the U.S. to Europe. This capacity
spans multiple subsea cables with more diverse cable landings and
terrestrial routing into major cities

What are targets that you have set
yourself over the next five years of the Indian operations?

AT&T has had a presence in India for over twenty years. We have
established excellent relationships with domestic carriers and we have
a deep understanding of the Indian business environment. Being the
first to receive the new ILD/NLD/ISP licences allowed us to expand our
portfolio of services and work directly with customers on all aspects
from contracting to delivery and implementation, which has given us
much more control over quality, reliability and service.

AT&T's strategy is to deliver differentiated, value-added, IP
and data services and solutions to companies whose organization and
business models are being rethought and transformed by improved
communications infrastructures. Our goal is to be the “provider of
choice” serving enterprises' global needs for competitive, flexible and
integrated wide area IP networking solutions that span the globe.