[January 6, 2005]

SBC Unveils U-verse IP Products Suite

BY JOHANNE TORRES

SBC Communications Inc.’s chairman and CEO Edward E. Whitacre Jr. announced today that SBC U-verse will be the brand name for its suite of IP-based products and services set to launch this year. SBC U-verse will include integrated television, super high-speed Internet access and Voice over IP services.

"The U-verse experience perfectly describes what this new set of services is all about," said Whitacre. "It's about ensuring that the entire universe of communications and entertainment services works for and around you. To deliver the U-verse experience, we will harness the power and the promise of technology to provide simple, reliable and complete communications and entertainment services by fully and seamlessly integrating networks, services, and equipment. This new service captures the universe of choices and options available to consumers ... and it puts you at the center," he added.

SBC has already made public one of the ventures to be included in the SBC U-verse product and service suite—its $4 billion initiative “Project Lightspeed,” the company's deployment of fiber expected to reach 18 million households across 13 states by the end of 2007. Through Project Lightspeed, SBC companies plan to deliver integrated IP-based video, voice, wireless and data services, providing a different communications and entertainment experience.

In an official statement, Whitacre said that consumer broadband adoption levels are reaching critical mass and announced that at the end of 2004, the company reached a significant milestone of surpassing 5 million DSL lines in service. Additional details will be provided in the SBC fourth-quarter 2004 earnings release, scheduled for Jan. 26, 2005.

Earlier this week, SBC companies announced the formation of a joint venture with 2Wire Inc. to deliver a home entertainment service that integrates satellite TV programming, digital video recording, video on demand and Internet content, including Yahoo! Photos and music via a new set-top box—and ties them all together with the SBC Yahoo! user interface.

"This is the year when excitement and dependability finally get on the same page -- when connections and electronics finally come together to provide the convergence that our industry has been promising and our customers have been expecting," Whitacre said.

Other services in the U-verse suite will include Unified Communications—which combines wireline and wireless voice mail, e-mail and faxes into one mailbox. The service is available today but will continue to be enhanced in the coming months. Also, the U-verse family of services will include a consumer-based VoIP service that the company plans to unveil during this year’s first-quarter. Specific U-verse product names will be announced later in the year as the products are made available to consumers.

SBC Communications Inc.
www.sbc.com