AT&T is making a major telecom investment in many areas of its business. The telecom giant cites the explosion of high-speed networks, data consuming devices and the move to IP as the reason for this investment.

The money is being spent to become a larger global player as well as a big provider of utility computing services.

Where will the company be spending money?

• Subsea Fiber: Expect the company to expand capacity to area of the world experiencing economic growth such as Asia and the Middle East.
• MPLS Routers: The company will add a number of these throughout the world in order to ensure there is proper capacity in areas of rapid business growth.
• Metro Ethernet: The company will invest in a manner which allows it to have such services available in 39 countries.
• DSL: Investments will allow AT&T to provide this service in 21 countries.
• Data Center Increase: AT&T will add 180,000 square feet of global capacity by mid 2009 throughout its 28 data centers.
• Unified Communications: Integrating and developing recently acquired Interwise – a web conferencing company into AT&T’s network.
• Expanding Audio Conferencing: Expect IP-based conferencing in more than 140 countries with native language support.

Here is my analysis of this news:

As AT&T gets more involved in the utility computing market, I expect them to butt heads with Sun, Amazon and Google. Google is a past foe – Amazon and Sun are new ones.

While a year ago the cable companies were eating the lunch of AT&T and Verizon, there has been a rapid about-face in the market which has been fueled by the wireless arms of both LECS, IPTV and well as international expansion.

I believe the cable companies will have to do something soon to be able to compete effectively in emerging markets.

In all, this news is fantastic for the telecom market as AT&T is spending 33 percent more than last year and double what they spent in 2006.

It will be great to see these investments allow AT&T to can overseas and whether it can compete effectively against other utility computing players in the market.