For AT&T, Late Is Great

It's hardly news that hosting and colo providers are eager to sign up companies hosted by Cable & Wireless and Sprint. A bunch of providers have been hustling to get in front of these customers since the June 4 announcement that C&W was exiting the US market. This has received scant media coverage, except for our site and a couple of other hosting publications. Until today, when AT&T announced a fairly benign promotional package offering one month of free hosting. Suddenly, the media is mobilized! A blizzard of coverage ensues, almost none of which mentions anyone besides AT&T.

AT&T's announcement was covered by The Financial Times, Business Week (via C/Net), and InternetNews.com . You'd think AT&T had invented the idea of chasing stranded hosting customers. Only InternetNews mentioned any other companies, and only one (NaviSite).

What's amazing about all this coverage is that AT&T is late to the game. How late? If you only count the companies using major press release services (Business Wire or PR NewsWire), AT&T was the ninth company to announce such a promotion. They trailed NaviSite (June 6), Cogent (June 6) , Digex (June 9), NEXL (June 9), Globix (June 12), AboveNet (June 16), Switch and Data (June 16) and RagingWire (June 16). Many of these providers' offerings equal or exceed the one free month that AT&T is offering.

I'm not knocking AT&T for trying, mind you. But some days I'm just amazed how the media works.