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AT&T Enters North Carolina, South Carolina and Louisiana Residential Local Phone Markets

Posted on: Thursday, 8 January 2004, 06:00 CST

MORRISTOWN, N.J., Jan. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- AT&T today announced it is now offering most South Carolina, North Carolina and Louisiana residents in BellSouth's service areas a choice of competitively priced local calling plans, with the ability to add an attractively priced long-distance plan for a convenient bundled communications package.

"North and South Carolinians and Louisianans now can reap the benefits of local competition by taking advantage of AT&T's local calling plans," said Kevin Crull, senior vice president, AT&T Consumer. "We're delighted to be able to offer these consumers the ability to choose from a number of local phone service plans that have been designed to meet their communications needs from one of the most respected communications companies in the nation."

AT&T already provides residential local service to over 3.8 million residential customers and, with today's announcement, offers local service in a total of 27 states. AT&T now serves residential customers across all of BellSouth's nine-state territory. Additionally, AT&T's local service is available to 64.8 million households served by the Bell companies -- 76 percent of all households in Bell territories.

"Regulators so far have resisted enormous pressure from incumbent monopolies to scuttle federal Telecom Act provisions that are just now allowing us to bring more choice and new services to residential customers. Consumers win with competition," said Crull.

"The FCC's Triennial Review decision in February 2003 found that the existing rules still are necessary for competition to exist. We're banking on regulatory decisions at the state level in the next nine months that will continue policies allowing consumers a competitive choice for local phone service. They will be critical to the future of competition," he said.

AT&T offers a variety of local and long distance calling plans to best suit consumers' individual needs. For example, one of its most popular plans includes the following for a monthly plan fee of $26.95 in North Carolina and $29.95 in South Carolina and Louisiana:

* Unlimited local calling.

* A choice of three features, such as Caller ID (listing the name and

number of the caller), Call Waiting, 3-Way Calling, Call Return or

Call Forwarding.

* A single, simple-to-read bill for local and long distance calls.

* One phone number to call for all customer service needs.

For an additional $3.95 per month, customers can bundle their local plan with the long distance calling plan AT&T Local One Rate(R) Plus and pay just 7 cents a minute for all their domestic, direct-dialed long distance and local toll calls.

Residential customers in the three states can also take advantage of AT&T's newest bundled calling plan, AT&T One Rate USA(SM). For a monthly plan fee of $54.95 in North Carolina and Louisiana and $59.95 in South Carolina, customers can get their choice of popular calling features along with unlimited local and long distance voice calls within the United States.

Consumers who switch their local residential service from BellSouth to AT&T will be able to keep their existing phone number in most cases, and AT&T will pay all switching charges.

AT&T already offers local voice and data services to businesses in the three states.

To sign up for AT&T residential local service in these three states, consumers can call toll-free 1 800 ATT 4 ALL, or for more information, visit the company's Web site at http://www.att.com/home.

In a 2002 J.D. Power and Associates study of residential local telephone service providers, AT&T Consumer ranked highest in local service customer satisfaction among all major carriers with more than one million customers. In fact, the J.D. Power and Associates study showed that AT&T Consumer ranked highest in the quality of its offers, and in its ability to resolve customer problems on the first try. The study placed AT&T Consumer ahead of 11 other local service providers, behind only smaller Cincinnati Bell, which serves fewer than 700,000 households in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.

About AT&T

For more than 125 years, AT&T has been known for unparalleled quality and reliability in communications. Backed by the research and development capabilities of AT&T Labs, the company is a global leader in local, long distance, Internet and transaction-based voice and data services.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19991018/ATT )

Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19991018/ATTAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com

AT&T

CONTACT: Bob Nersesian of AT&T, +1-973-326-3643 (office), ornersesian@att.com

Web site: http://www.att.com/http://www.att.com/home

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