AT&T announced last week a business "triple play" bundle targeted for small businesses that includes wireless voice, wired voice and high speed Internet services -- starting at less than $100 a month. The "All for Less" bundle doesn't offer any new services, but the low price tag may be very attractive to the small business, especially in tough economic times.

The All for Less bundle provides one to four voice lines in a single location across AT&T's 22-state local service area footprint. To get the rock-bottom $99 price, users are provided with a wireless voice plan that comes with 450 minutes a month per wireless device, AT&T business local calling, AT&T business unlimited calling (for long distance), and a DSL AT&T High Speed Internet Express connection with download speeds up to 1.5Mbps. Users can also opt for a variety of other Internet speeds, and can include as many as four voice lines per site for an additional charge.

Value-added services for the Internet that come with the package include "U.S.-based business-class technical support, all-in-one protection suite for selected tiers, up to 11 e-mail accounts and AT&T Wi-Fi(SM) connectivity at more than 20,000 hot spots at convenient locations nationwide and more than 90,000 hotspots worldwide," according to the company’s statement.

The voice plan includes call forwarding and caller ID.

AT&T also offers other small business bundles, starting with a Double Pack unlimited domestic wired voice plus a 3Mbps DSL broadband connection for $90, a Triple Pack that adds 450 wireless minutes to the Double Pack, and a Complete Office Solution that adds a second line, a Yellow Page listing, and unified communications features to the triple pack.

Our observation: the telcos and cable companies have used bundles as an effective competitive tool in the consumer market for more than two years and as the cable operators move to compete with telcos for the SMB market, the move by both to bundles is not surprising. The good news for the SMB is that if the consumer pricing precedent holds true, then a SMB bundle can save a small business as much a 30% over list prices.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.