Southwestern Bell Opens First "One-Stop" Shopping Store In Kansas City

Customers Can Shop For Wireless And Landline Products And Services In Northland Location

Kansas City, Missouri, November 3, 1997

For the first time in Kansas City, busy shoppers will be able to shop for wireless and landline phones, add new options to their home or business telephones, sample the speed of ISDN and pay their wireless or landline phone bills - all under one roof.

Southwestern Bell's The Store, a new one-stop shopping venue at 6509 Northwest Barry Road (Barry Woods Crossing shopping center at I-29 and Barry Road), will open today, giving Kansas City-area customers an opportunity to purchase Southwestern Bell Wireless and Southwestern Bell Telephone products in one location.

"We know our customers want convenience and value, as well as a single place to shop," said Lou Simmons, vice president and general manager of Southwestern Bell Wireless-Midwest region. "With the opening of Southwestern Bell's first one-stop shopping store in Kansas City, our customers benefit from a full range of products and services, making it easy for them to do business with us."

The new Southwestern Bell store offers customers a chance to select from a variety of wireless and landline services, including the opportunity to:

• Visit with professional service representatives about Southwestern Bell Wireless' coverage area and various rate plans, and choose from a complete range of wireless products and services, such as FreedomLink or FreedomPlus phone service, prepaid cellular and installation/repair;
• Enhance their landline telephone by purchasing optional calling features, such as Caller ID, CallNotes* and Call Waiting;
• Increase their accessibility with paging services;
• Speed up their entry into the future with Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN); and
• Pay both landline telephone and wireless bills at one convenient location.

"In addition to the wide range of products and services in our store, we will be offering in-store demonstrations," Simmons said. "In the telecommunications world, products and services are changing every day because of new technologies and customers' fast-paced lives. In our new store, customers can 'try out' these new products, ask questions and, at the same time, get the quality and service assurances they expect from Southwestern Bell."

The 4,000 square-foot store in Kansas City is the latest of 26 one-stop shopping stores the company intends to open throughout a five-state territory. Others have opened in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Dallas.

Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. provides basic and leading-edge telephone services and products to more than 13.5 million business and residential customers - a total of more than 15 million access lines - in Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Kansas. Southwestern Bell Wireless, together with SBC's other wireless affiliates, is a leading wireless provider, serving nearly 5 million customers in 78 markets nationwide. Southwestern Bell Messaging offers innovative voice and fax messaging services to residential and business customers throughout Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas. All are companies of SBC Communications Inc., a global leader in the telecommunications industry, with more than 32 million access lines and nearly 5 million wireless customers across the United States, as well as investments in telecommunications businesses in 10 countries. Under the Southwestern Bell, Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell brands, the company, through its subsidiaries, offers a wide range of innovative services, including local and long-distance telephone service, wireless communications, paging, Internet access, cable TV and messaging, as well as telecommunications equipment, and directory advertising and publishing. SBC (www.sbc.com) has more than 114,000 employees and reported 1996 revenues of $23.5 billion. SBC's equity market value of $56.5 billion (as of June 30, 1997) ranks it as one of the five largest telecommunications companies in the world.