Blizzard, AT&T Sign Miltimillion Dollar Hosting Deal

AT&T will sport the hosting for World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and Diablo III.

Wednesday AT&T said that it reached an agreement with Blizzard that expands their current ten-year relationship. In a new multimillion dollar, multi-year, multi-services contract, Blizzard will use AT&T's Enterprise Hosting Services in North America for World of WarCraft and the upcoming StarCraft and Diablo franchises.

AT&T said that it will also provide voice and data services for Global Call Center Support, the backbone behind Blizzard's call centers around the world including the U.S., Europe, and Asia. "Multiple voice services, domestic and international, to support gamers’ customer service calls, and billing are now supported by AT&T’s global network," the company said.

In addition to the servers and call center support, the contract also allows AT&T to provide its Intelligent Content Distribution service, a network-based Content Distribution Network service that will "quickly and reliably" transmit patches and content updates to the players.

AT&T's Gaming Core Team, originally launched back in 2004 to meet the infrastructure needs of gaming operations on AT&T's IP network, will monitor and manage the technology infrastructure powering Blizzard's games on a proactive, 24/7 basis.

"Over the years, AT&T has demonstrated that it understands the needs of our business," said Paul Sams, Chief Operating Officer of Blizzard Entertainment. "The services and support AT&T provides have helped us to consistently deliver high-quality online-gaming experiences to our players."