AT&T is tightening its global focus on multinational enterprise customers, expanding and extending its global network with a particular focus on developing nations that its customers want to reach and on data products.

The strategy reflects the company's belief that it has an advantage over the handful of other global players still courting the multi-national market, said Bill Archer, president of AT&T's EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) organization.

"This is still a very competitive market, but I think it is diverging in the sense that those companies able to support large multinationals as we are targeting are clearly fewer in number than at any time previously," he said. "It is a very few simply because the scale requirements, the scope of capability requirements and investment all require large and capable organizations and companies with ambition and focus and ability to execute. The barriers to entering are very high."

Remaining global competitors include France Telecom, which acquired Equant, BT, which bought Infonet, and Verizon, which acquired MCI Communications. Archer believes AT&T is well out ahead of them all.

"FT/Equant, BT, Verizon are the companies we see most commonly," he said. "In every region of the world, there are strong regional competitors but in the main, the large users are seeking fewer providers and providers with more scope and scale as opposed to many regional companies all knitted together.

"We think we are well ahead of our global competitors," Archer said. "Some are in the early stages, others won't be able to get there. We have been at this globalization four or five years, in earnest, making a major investment in a global footprint that enables us to bring to the multinational a consistent set of capabilities wherever they may operate."

Earlier this week, AT&T announced an expansion of those capabilities as it extended its dedicated IP-MPLS network to now reach 127 countries and added remote access points to reach 35,000 total in 150 countries. In addition to integrating SBC's 1000 frame relay/ATM nodes into its global coverage, the company doubled its DSL country coverage through agreements with local service providers in Finland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, India, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Canada, Taiwan and Singapore. The company tripled its Ethernet coverage in Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Indian Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia.

It also added seven AT&T Global Network nodes in Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indian and Vietnam.

"We have a substantial set of assets in place today worldwide," Archer said. "Integrated with our U.S. network, that means that multinational companies based in the U.S. or the rest of the world have access to a common and consistent set of services that are implemented, delivered, billed and supported consistently and in the same fashion anywhere in the globe."

Its continued expansion will be based on customer demand, he added, as AT&T is continually talking with its customers about what they need.