AT&T Plans Jobs Expansion

By Erika D. Smith, The Indianapolis Star

Feb. 27–AT&T plans to announce this morning that it is bringing hundreds of new jobs to Indianapolis.

The telecommunications company wouldn’t offer many details Monday, saying only that the jobs are related to last year’s passage of a telecommunications bill in the Indiana General Assembly.

That bill has made it easier for AT&T and other traditional telephone companies to compete with cable companies, such as Comcast.

AT&T won the right to negotiate video franchises statewide. The company has said it will roll out its brand of television, U-verse, to half of all its Hoosier subscribers by late 2008.

The bill also let AT&T raise rates on basic local phone service in exchange for extending high-speed Internet access to half the customers in each community it serves. AT&T has said it would do so for at least 33 rural communities by this year.

To offer video service, AT&T would rely on its DSL, or broadband Internet service, which requires a vastly upgraded network from the system used to handle traditional phone traffic.

Gov. Mitch Daniels, Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson and AT&T Indiana President George Fleetwood are scheduled to attend today’s news conference at the Indiana Statehouse.

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