AT&T offers fast links

By PETER GRIFFIN

A few months after winding down its global telecoms venture with British Telecommunications, AT&T is strengthening its presence in the Asia Pacific region with a new service that will feed into its growing global network.

It has launched some VPN (Virtual Private Network) services that are aimed at companies that have offices elsewhere in the world and want to streamline their connections with them.

The services are largely based on the global data network AT&T bought from IBM in 1998 and assets returned from Concert, which ceases to exist at the end of this month.

AT&T's director of portfolio and marketing strategy, David Foster, said existing staff and services would be kept in place for three years as a condition of the Concert wind-down.

He said AT&T was looking to build a more extensive network than the one on which Concert was based.

AT&T's New Zealand general manager, Roger Payne, said Concert had a handful of multinational customers with a presence in New Zealand.

The new services would target New Zealand companies with branch offices overseas such as Trade New Zealand and Peace Software - both existing AT&T customers.

He said offering the new services would not involve AT&T investing in infrastructure in New Zealand.