Of course it's a lie. I heard Legg say it so enough said.
Legg made a point at his holiday town hall to laugh about the worst things people have said about him and one of them was if his lips are moving, he's lying. And another was that he was just another yes man for the Stink. And that's true also. They all have their same story line about offshoring that these are are fellow employees, blah, blah, blah.
This is no different that when AT&T outsourced to IBM and others who then off shored the work a year later. Only they have eliminated the middle man and kept any labor savings in pocket because it appears now AT&T doesn't even care that people know they are shipping work out of the country.
It's even worse that they lie about the reasons for it and try to claim it's "around the clock development" while then closing up offices in the US saying we want things centralized because of collaboration. Does anyone really believe they'll tell these overseas workers to work at the same time as in the US in the interest of collaboration? And as the OP mentioned, then that kind of blows their "24 hour development argument".
As usual, AT&T made up lies to try to soften this that don't even make sense.