AT&T Expands Strategic IT Partnership With Five Star Quality Care

NEWTON, Mass., July 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AT&T Inc. announced today an extended and expanded contract with Five Star Quality Care to provide a full range of voice, data and networking services for health care facilities operated by Five Star Quality Care. AT&T will also provide hosting and security services for Five Star. Specific details of the multiyear contract were not disclosed.

AT&T designed a custom suite of hosting and networking services to provide stability, reliability and scalability for Five Star's mission-critical applications. As part of the solution, AT&T established a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)-based wide area network with private IP-enabled frame relay across more than 130 Five Star locations nationwide. The solution balances Five Star's network traffic and simplifies its site-to-site communications. The frame relay services also provide Five Star with flexible disaster recovery solutions that can be deployed rapidly to ensure optimal network efficiency and reliability.

"AT&T worked closely with us to understand our business and designed solutions that have significantly improved our operational efficiencies," said Jonathan Hood, vice president of information technology for Five Star Quality Care. "With AT&T's solutions in place, we can focus on our own core competencies with confidence that our data and communications are supported by world-class networking capabilities and the most advanced technologies available."

AT&T also designed and built a custom SONET ring that enables Five Star to connect its key hub locations on one private access network. This is a fully managed service whose architecture protects against virtually any service interruptions.

Additionally, AT&T provides Five Star with fully managed security services. These include AT&T's Network-Based Firewall Services, a secure, cost-effective solution that manages and controls employee access to the Internet and prevents unauthorized access into the corporate AT&T network; and AT&T Internet Protect, a security-alerting and notification service that offers advanced information regarding potential real-time attacks, such as viruses and worms.

By leveraging the AT&T BusinessDirect portal, Five Star also has secure online access to tools that provide real-time reports on network performance and direct access to billing, ordering, status, inventory and trouble- management systems. Yankee Group recently named AT&T BusinessDirect the best enterprise customer portal for the second consecutive year for providing customers with the strongest online support and services experience in the industry (Source: Yankee Group, Business E-Portals Continue to Evolve to Meet Enterprise Customer Needs, April 2006).

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About Five Star Quality Care

Five Star Quality Care, Inc. operates independent living and congregate care communities, assisted living facilities and nursing homes. As of March 31, 2006, Five Star operates 153 senior living facilities in 28 states.

Subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. provide products and services under the AT&T brand.

About AT&T

AT&T Inc. is one of the world's largest telecommunications holding companies and is the largest in the United States. Operating globally under the AT&T brand, AT&T companies are recognized as the leading worldwide providers of IP-based communications services to business and as leading U.S. providers of high speed DSL Internet, local and long distance voice, and directory publishing and advertising services. AT&T Inc. holds a 60 percent ownership interest in Cingular Wireless, which is the No. 1 U.S. wireless services provider with 55.8 million wireless customers. Additional information about AT&T Inc. and AT&T products and services is available at http://www.att.com/ .