AT&T-Supported Exhibit Explores Flow of Communications through New York City

MIT's New York Talk Exchange Exhibit at New York Museum of Modern Art Visualizes AT&T Network Traffic Volume to Examine New York's Connectivity with the World

New York, New York, February 25, 2008

It's no surprise that the city that never sleeps never stops communicating. But a closer look at this 24/7 flow of communications reveals notable trends both about the five boroughs and about how communications is enabling and furthering an increasingly global community.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) has announced that, to reveal and explore these trends, the SENSEable City Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) worked with AT&T to create a novel project called New York Talk Exchange (NYTE). The exhibit transforms the volumes of voice, data and Internet Protocol (IP) communications flowing into and out of New York City over the AT&T network into visual formats that clearly illustrate how thoroughly connected the five boroughs are with the world at large.

The project will debuted Feb. 24, 2008, as part of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind. The MoMA exhibit will run through May 12, 2008.

To create NYTE, MIT collaborated with AT&T Labs researchers to capture aggregated flows of communications traffic from AT&T's global IP and voice networks and examined traffic volumes flowing in and out of New York for an extended period of time. This data is projected as three large visualizations, which will be displayed inside the MoMA and will also be accessible for viewing online at http://senseable.mit.edu/nyte/.

AT&T also is the sole corporate sponsor of the event via a $150,000 grant from the AT&T Foundation — the corporate philanthropy organization of AT&T Inc.

"At AT&T Labs, we are focused on continuing research and development of communications technologies and capabilities that enable people to do more and get more from connectivity," said Keith Cambron, president and CEO of AT&T Labs. "By supporting MIT in its development of NYTE, we have been able to explore new ways of researching how and when people communicate. This insight is invaluable as we work to predict how those communications needs may evolve in the future."

The first visualization, called Globe Encounters, uses real-time, 3-D animations to show how other cities around the world are connected to New York.

The second visual, called Pulse of the Planet, shows how those connections change throughout the day as time zones sweep across the planet. "It is like showing how the heart of New York pulsates in real time and how it connects with the global network of cities," said Carlo Ratti, director of the SENSEable City Laboratory and associate professor of the Practice of Urban Technologies at MIT. The visualization also demonstrates that New York truly is the city that never sleeps by following a 24-hour schedule of voice and data communications in and out of the city.

The third and final visual takes the viewer inside New York City's five boroughs and explores the differences among global connections from neighborhood to neighborhood.