AT&T Wants Your (Small) Business

Just about every major corporation in the world knows that there's immense opportunity in offering products and services to the millions of small businesses in the U.S. Successfully wooing these companies that aspire to be big companies proves to be quite a challenge, however.

For its part, telecom giant AT&T (NYSE: T) stepped up its effort to court small business owners by offering new wireless plans geared to outfitting a small business staff with wireless communications tools. The plans allow a business to pool up to 20,000 voice minutes with as many as 40 employees, which means heavy users can balance out light users without running over plan limits. The wireless plans were launched in tandem with new AT&T website design and hosting services aimed at easing the job of setting up a small business online.

Competing carrier Verizon Wireless -- a joint venture between Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) and Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) -- carries its own set of business wireless plans that have minute-sharing options for an additional $5 per line per month. A diversified telecom as well, Verizon also offers business services that include Internet access, local and long-distance, and even high-speed FiOS broadband services.

Particularly with wireless services, carriers' success in signing up small businesses will have a significant impact on subscriber growth -- especially considering how saturated the U.S. market is for wireless services. While splashy consumer device successes such as the enigmatic Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone carry the headlines, corporate and small business accounts are also some of the most lucrative for telecoms.

Investors don't have to look far to find dozens of success stories in small business services companies, either. Consider the growth in the likes of printing services firm VistaPrint and email marketing specialist Constant Contact.

AT&T will try to replicate the success of many major corporations that are driving growth on the back of small business -- consider Intuit's (Nasdaq: INTU) popular TurboTax line, Hewlett-Packard's (NYSE: HPQ) printing and computing products, and American Express' (NYSE: AXP) Open Network. If it's successful, the company would not only drive new subscribers to the AT&T brand, but also capture high-valued customers that tend to upgrade and spend more for services as they grow bigger.

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