AT&T Corp. Wednesday made a move for the Spanish language audience by adding a Spanish version of its WorldNet service and teaming with Starmedia on a co-branded site.
AT&T WorldNet en Espanol will also offer in-language customer service, chat rooms, e-mail, bulletin boards, instant messaging, classified ads and games. The service also offers personal Web pages and free parental
control software.
Starmedia (STRM) will lead the new users through the service, and will provide access to its network.
“The Internet is becoming the communications channel of choice, so it makes sense that we would want to create a service that’s easy to use for Spanish-speaking consumers,” said Fernando Hernandez, International
Consumer Services director for AT&T.
According to eMarketer research, there are 7 million U.S. Hispanic Internet users alone, representing 21 percent of the total population.
AT&T WorldNet’s original service was launched in 1996, and has since built to a subsciber base of 1.8 million.