AT&T Corp’s new chief executive Michael Armstrong is due to announce later this month a new business plan to reinvigorate the world’s second largest telecoms company. The recent sale of various non-core businesses such as the customer services unit (CI No 3,317) for $625m, and the Universal Card Services sale for $3.5bn, alongside rumored potential sales of other non core business such as the paging and messaging units. All the sales are part of a strategy to invest the cash from non core business back into mainstream telecoms. AT&T also doesn’t see the recent overturning of the 1996 Telecommunications Act (CI No 3,317), as a threat that will cause it to change its plans, because it doesn’t expect the appeals over the verdict to be completed until the second quarter of 1999. Instead Armstrong sees AT&T in the short term making a number of acquisitions, continuing to expand its fixed line telecoms infrastructure and cellular phone network. All these efforts will be coupled with a restructuring of the company’s business units, and will give it a boost in the long distance business and it hopes a share of the $110bn local telecoms business.
