REDMOND, Wash.-AT&T Wireless Services Inc. will stop accepting customers on its slow-speed packet-data CDPD network by next year, and will shut down the network in 2004.
The company is working to alert all its CDPD customers of the change, and is offering them incentives to move onto the company’s growing higher-speed GPRS network.
The move comes as little surprise to many in the industry. Several wireless carriers, including AT&T and what is now Verizon Wireless, first started building CDPD networks in the mid 1990s as an addition to their existing analog networks. The Internet protocol-based wireless data service offered speeds up to 19.9 Kbps but generally worked at about half that speed. Although much trumpeted during the 1990s, CDPD providers have little to show for their efforts. Most CDPD customers are public safety agencies such as police departments.
Today, CDPD providers do not currently offer subscriber numbers, but those in the industry estimate the total user base to be around several hundred thousand.
“I figured (the AT&T shutdown) was coming,” said David Chamberlain, research director of wireless Internet services and networks for Probe Research, adding that the move will free up bandwidth for AT&T. “I don’t think they (AT&T) are going to upset anyone. I think it’s going to be met with a big yawn.”
Chamberlain pointed out that AT&T is not the first to shut down a network-Nextel Communications Inc. and Telus Mobility in Canada have also managed to move customers onto new networks in order to shut down older networks.
