(Associated Press via NewsEdge) Five years ago, General Motors's worldwide telecommunications system was lagging the company's fledgling effort to globalize vehicle design, engineering and manufacturing.
Now, as the company moves toward building more models in more places off the same underpinnings to save billions of dollars, GM and AT&T have a network in place that allows engineers and plant officials worldwide to simultaneously view the same data and discuss it.
GM gave AT&T even more business, awarding it a five-year, $1 billion global networking contract that will prepare the world's largest automaker for whatever electronic breakthroughs lie ahead.
GM employees eventually will have the same telecommunications tools no matter where they are in the world, including common voice mail and conferencing abilities. Because of the network, the quality will be the same in other countries as it is at GM's Detroit headquarters, the companies said.
The contract is just a small portion of AT&T's revenue, which amounted to $63.1 billion last year. But the company is hoping that the GM experience will help it generate more business as more companies realize the need to electronically link global operations, said Ron Spears, executive vice president of AT&T's global business sales.
Under the contract, AT&T also will manage all of GM's telecommunications suppliers around the world, making sure that communications are standardized.
The pact renews an existing contract with AT&T, but company officials would not disclose the value of that agreement.
Kent Custer, a telecommunications industry analyst with A.G. Edwards & Sons in St. Louis, said the deal is the biggest of its type that AT&T has ever done.
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