AT&T predicts uptick in 2010

AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson believes that they will see the light at the end of the economic tunnel in the second half of 2010. This comes in the face of ongoing layoffs, widening landline voice losses, and a drop [1] in business service revenues during the third-quarter.

Even though the business services unit has been one of AT&T's cash cows, revenue decreased 10.5 percent from the third quarter of 2008. "We're a butts-in-the-seats kind of business," Stephenson said to in a speech at the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council on Tuesday.

In the near-term Stephenson presented a sobering, yet honest, outlook. He said that AT&T will see little, if any, rise in Q4 09 results. What's more, Stephenson said he could not predict when the company would stop cutting jobs.

Along with job losses and failing businesses another factor that AT&T believes is slowing down enterprise business sales is the uncertainty over new government initiatives such as healthcare reform. Still, AT&T, along with its ILEC peers, has increased its advertising and marketing budget to promote services and new products to be prepared when enterprises get ready to start spending again.

For more:
- Wall Street Journal has this article [2]

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