ATLANTA—BellSouth Corp. said it is expanding its Wireless Broadband Service to Albany, Ga., and Paducah, Ky., this month. The service runs over a pre-WiMAX network.
The company said it also is expanding its New Orleans service, which offers residential and business customers high-speed Internet access, to include New Orleans East. The service works on the company’s licensed 2.3 GHz spectrum.
BellSouth said it now offers service in 10 southeastern markets, including four markets launched last month in South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi and Tennessee.
The launches are notable as members of Congress are calling for BellSouth and AT&T Inc. to divest their 2.3 MHz and 2.5 MHz spectrum holdings as part of their planned merger. The carriers have argued that they should not be required to divest the spectrum, pointing out that Sprint Nextel Corp. owns more spectrum than their combined entity would. AT&T and BellSouth also have said they have no intention of warehousing any of the 2 GHz spectrum, but instead would use it to fulfill President Bush’s call for delivering wireless broadband services.
