Atandt Essay, Research Paper

The dominant economic traits of this industry start with having an enormous amount of capital required for staying competitive. One is also required to spend lots of money on research and development, as the telecommunications industry seems to be the vision of the future. More and more companies like AT&T are trying very hard to combine their network services of phone line, video and data transfer, high speed internet access, and television cable via one line in the consumers homes. With a successful combination of the above stated services AT&T is hoping to be the industry leader in the near future.

In today s telecommunication market there is a lot of competition by industry giants such as Sprint, MCI, and AOL, but simultaneously the very high cost involved with entering and competing in this industry also makes it very unattractive for new entrants. These are just some of the big names who are planning to and are presently providing parts of the pipe dream that AT&T seems to seek. In this industry it is very important to have customer awareness of the line of products you carry. Most of the public hears the name AT&T or Sprint or MCI and they think telephone bills but many consumers do not realize that these companies have expanded their field of services from cellular phones to wireless web services. The reason mainly being the lack of marketing, and direct consumer advertising provided by these firms on the other line of products they carry besides the well-known home phone industry.

Cable companies such as Time-Warner, which was recently acquired by the internet giant America On Line, has tried providing the all in one digital service to its customers in Orlando Florida. But, unfortunately due to the enormous cost and very little public interest and demand Time-Warner decided to pull the plug on its nationwide change over to digital lines. This shows that the cable companies are surpassing the consumer demand for technology, making this industry a very hard one to market.

The telecommunications industry is a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide. The key success factors in this industry are hard to pin point, because they vary from having the right amount of money to having the right amount of customers. This industry is a very expensive industry to do research and development in. Besides the money required for R&D the companies in this business have to spend tremendous amount of capital on advertising and consumer awareness. The services provided by the different competitors in this industry are essentially the same but with very different reputations. AOL spends millions of dollars every year to send free trial C.D., in order to gain customer awareness. Which in turn shows the results as being very successful, making AOL the largest internet-service provider in the United States.

Market share is another key success factor, the more consumers you can reach the better off you are in the long run. Customer demand changes very rapidly in this industry. With the invention of cellular phones and the Internet, the demand for technologically advanced communication systems seems to be growing at a rapid pace. But due to very high costs and lack of consumer awareness past ventures at AT&T such as the PersonaLink Service, on-line shopping, the Business Network, and its ImagiNation Game Network has failed miserably in the past.

Customers nowadays in the telecommunications industry search for the best price, rather than the best name. Although, branding is an important part of the game but it is not the most crucial. Taking the home phone industry into consideration, giants such as AT&T, Sprint and MCI has suffered a tremendous financial loss and customer base to other, much cheaper, long distance services which require you to just type in a 5 to 8 digit code prior to dialing the number. The cellular phone industry is also the same but a lot less competitive due to the very high costs associated with providing wireless services.