AT&T; moves to speed up product rollouts

AT&T; Inc., seeking to fight off competition from cable companies selling phone service, made management-team changes to speed up product introductions across its wireless, home phone, Internet and television businesses.

The changes, announced internally Monday, align employee teams and products around three units that target businesses and consumers, spokesman Michael Coe said Tuesday.

Coe declined to discuss marketing plans or new products.

AT&T;, the largest U.S. phone company, aims to speed up the introduction of products accessible from any AT&T; device. The company will roll out more products similar to a current feature that lets customers program television recorders from their phones, Coe said.

AT&T; is spending $6.5 billion over five years on network upgrades to sell bundled TV and phone service.

It’s “not just bundling services and saying, ‘You can buy this bundle of services from us,’ but the services actually working together,” Coe said. “We’re obviously hoping to accelerate the effort with this reorganization.”

AT&T;, based in Dallas, rose 17 cents to $27.92. The stock has dropped 33% this year.

AT&T;’s TV service, called U-Verse, had 549,000 subscribers at the end of the second quarter. That number may almost double by year-end, the company said in July. By comparison, Time Warner Cable Inc. had 13.3 million basic cable subscribers at the end of the second quarter.

Verizon Communications Inc., which is set to surpass AT&T; as the largest phone company when its acquisition of Alltel Corp. is completed, offers bundles of television, phone and Internet service.