call center services. April saw Kodak selecting AT&T to provide network management, monitoring, and maintenance services for all of Kodak's web applications. And in May, the Finnish airline Finnair awarded the company a contract worth about $5.6 million to set up and manage a global wide-area network (commonly known as a WAN). AT&T Business Services, business was booming. Down with advertising But in homes across the U.S., AT&T has been losing ground. Because of the increasing use of cell phones and the Internet, the future of long-distance service as we know it is uncertain. Some were forecasting a decline by as much as 20 percent a year on consumer long-distance revenue. The venerable telecom giant made a telling move in July 2004, when it announced that it would stop spending money on marketing and advertising in seven states on residential services like local and long- distance, on which it had based its corporate identity almost since its inception. A federal court ruling that month had struck down long-distance carriers' ability to lease local telephone lines at discounted rates. AT&T said that move would make it more costly to provide local services to its 35 million residential customers, SO it decided to cut the fat. Then in August 2004, the company followed up its declaration to stop marketing residential services with an announcement that it would raise rates for residential customers in 40 states who use the company for local service. Goodbye, old friend And that's probably only the beginning. All of AT&T's residential services may be on the wane. At first, the company hoped that an increase in sales of local/long- distance service "bundles" could offset some of the revenue declines. But now, Visit Vault at www.vault.com for insider company profiles, expert advice, VAULT CAREER career message boards, expert resume reviews, the Vault Job Board and more. LIBRARY Vault Guide to the Top Telecom Employers having abandoned new residential customers to its competitors, most analysts think the service is only