AT&T is donating more than $1.2 million to support seven small businesses focused on distance learning programs, as the coronavirus outbreak forces students to continue their studies at home.
"When you think about small businesses, they are the most at-risk businesses in America today," Mo Katibeh, CMO and EVP of AT&T Business, told Cheddar. "Some estimates show that up to 25 percent of small businesses, over 2 million of them, could face material cash challenges or could even go out of business."
The company has set up a larger $10 million fund to provide resources for educators, parents, and students to help continue their education while schools are shut down.
The fund has supported nonprofits and companies, such as the online tutoring service Khan Academy, to expand their free education resources.
"This isn't new with COVID, but we've doubled down on our efforts with this $10 million grant and the [$1.2 million] we're announcing today," Katibeh said.
This charitable effort was launched amid a massive shift at AT&T to accommodate a decreased demand from business customers and an increase from residential consumers.
"The network is handling this shift in traffic from work locations to home locations extremely well," Katibeh said.
The company's core network is up 25 percent. That's over 400 petabytes of traffic per day, which is equivalent of 50 million filing cabinets filled with paper, Katibeh said.
There has also been a 300 percent uptick in traffic related to collaboration tools for businesses and education facilities such as Zoom and Google Hangouts.
AT&T has made a concerted effort to appear engaged with coronavirus relief, including scrapping its plans for $4 billion stock buybacks.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
