A top AT&T (NYSE: T) executive said that the company's Network on Demand service, which lets customers provision their broadband services on the fly using a dedicated portal, is thriving and available in 175 markets.
At the Wells Fargo Securities Technology, Media & Telecom investor conference, Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobile & Business Solutions, said the company has 275 Network on Demand customers. In addition, he gave an example of how the Fort Worth, Texas, school district is using AT&T's network provisioning portal to reduce bandwidth to their schools when school is not in session for the summer and then increasing the bandwidth when school starts again. "It used to take weeks to provision a service, now it takes less than a minute," de la Vega added.
Although the Network on Demand service will cannibalize the company's legacy T-1 and ATM data service revenue base, AT&T said during its recent analyst meeting in Dallas that customers are willing to pay a premium for such services.
Interestingly, de la Vega also said that the company's focus on digitalizing all its operations, which it calls Digital First, is significantly reducing calls to the company's call center, allowing it to reduce head count.
Specifically, de la Vega said that at the beginning of the year the company's Digital First initiative reduced calls to the call center by 1 million calls per month. He said that as of now, that figure has been further reduced to 2 million calls per month. This reduction in call center calls has allowed the company to eliminate 10,000 jobs, which it has done by cutting contract positions and offering early retirement via an enhanced pension program to full-time employees.
For more:
- listen to this AT&T webcast (reg. req.)
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