AT&T Delivers 5,400 BlackBerry's to USPS Employees

[Berryman]

I guess a few sales staff at AT&T were popping corks

AT&T is deploying 5,400 BlackBerry devices, equipped with specialized mobile applications, to United States Postal Service (USPS) employees.

The company has said the BlackBerry 8800 and 8820 models will go out to executives, IT staff, and high-level managers in the 800,000-person USPS (News - Alert), replacing older devices the USPS first purchased in 2001.

George Wright, vice president and acting CTO at USPS said that the 8800 models will be delivered soon and the Wi-Fi enabled 8820s will be delivered in the second-phase deployment later this year.

The new BlackBerry's (News - Alert) will feature two specialized applications—one off-the-shelf that was customized in-house and one built by the USPS IT department. Wight explained that the first application is BMC Software's (News - Alert) Remedy help desk, which allows IT staff to wirelessly respond to and close troubleshooting tickets. The second is an in-house “e-approver” application that allows managers to view and approve purchase orders and the like while on the go.

Chris Hill, vice president of the government solutions group at AT&T's wireless unit, indicated that the delivery of 5,400 BlackBerry's to USPS is the largest centralized federal government BlackBerry deployment his company has ever done. He added in a statement, “AT&T has also supplied the U.S. Army with tens of thousands of BlackBerry's, but those are scattered in batches at various bases across the country.”

The BlackBerry's are going out to 750 USPS executives plus around 5,300 operations managers and IT staff, and the total cost of the deployment, including the engraving, will be around $200,000.

“Over the last few years we've been breaking even in our core business,” Wright commented, “but now we're in this new competitive position with private shippers, and we're there to make money. It's an interesting new world, and the BlackBerry's are one way we hope to improve our productivity and compete.”

Source: TMCnet
AT&T Delivers 5,400 BlackBerry's to USPS Employees

[jsanders]

I know some have had them in their hands for a while as our local Postmaster has answered an email from me to her, from her BB in the past.

[Gibralter]

Wow thats cool. That's alot of BBs to activate and get up and running.

Kudos for ATT!