AT&T maintains one of the leadership spots on Gartner's Asia Pacific Magic Quadrant

AT&T (NYSE: T) has been named one of the leaders on Gartner's "Magic Quadrant for Asia/Pacific Network Service Providers 2012 Report," illustrating the telco's ongoing drive to serve multinational corporations (MNCs) that have global offices in in key Asia Pacific regions.

Image source: Gartner

The service provider has been increasingly expanding its presence in various Asia Pacific countries with a particular focus on China, India and Japan.

In recent years, AT&T has developed a set of managed services, including telepresence, conferencing, unified communications (UC) and security to address MNCs that have a presence in these countries. Building on that service base, AT&T plans to introduce a new UC as a Service (UCaaS), which Gartner says is a "step toward more cloud-based services." All of these services are complemented by local on-site technicians who can address customer issues that arise with their managed and IT services.

The telco is also in the process of adding new data centers in three major markets--Singapore, Hong Kong and India--which will serve as the foundation to support its growing hosting business in the Asia Pacific region.

"AT&T remains a strong and stable provider, with good infrastructure and a broad portfolio of products and services," wrote Gartner in its report. "It is now more willing to take on large and complex projects that include full service outsourcing, which will strengthen its ability to compete in the very large global MNC segment."

China, for one, has been a continual focus for AT&T. Last month, the service provider broadened its suite of networking services via its partnership with China Telecom (NYSE: CHA) to serve MNCs expanding their presence in China.

In November 2011, the two telcos expanded their relationship, allowing China Telecom to improve services it provides Asian customers who are growing their presence in the United States over AT&T's network.

Overall, AT&T has been seeing growth in its U.S. and international IP-based business service revenues. In Q4 2012, the telco grew strategic IP-based business services 10.6 percent year-over-year and total business IP data revenues 2.4 percent year-over-year.

Even though AT&T has a strong set of tools to serve the Asia Pacific-based MNC market, Gartner notes they need to broaden their reach.

"AT&T focuses on very large MNCs with global requirements, and not on the broader enterprise market," Gartner said. "This leaves smaller MNCs, which form a large part of the market, unaddressed."

Growing its Ethernet coverage is another area the telco needs to address. Gartner said that while AT&T "is making good progress expanding its Ethernet WAN coverage in Asia/Pacific... it still lacks full regional coverage."

For more:
- see the release
- and the Gartner report

Special report: Wireline telecom earnings in the fourth quarter of 2012

Related articles:
AT&T sees consumer services grow to $5.5 billion in Q4, driven by IP data
AT&T, Verizon to see mixed Q4 wireline results, says Morgan Stanley
AT&T Q3: Consumer, business IP drive up wireline revenues 2%
VSG: AT&T, Level 3 raise global Ethernet profile, while Orange holds first place