After years of anticipation fueled by talk of a new technology still shrouded in secrecy, AT&T Wireless Services Inc. announced last week it is offering commercial digital wireless broadband service to residential customers in Fort Worth, Texas.
The new service, long known under the guise of Project Angel and most recently, AT&T National Wireless Local Exchange Carrier, will deliver always-on high-speed Internet access up to 12 times faster than traditional dial-up modems, as well as long-distance service. Customers will be able to choose their own local service provider, AT&T said.
Project Angel originally was designed to bypass the local phone carrier, but AT&T reconfigured it to offer high data speeds up to 1 megabit per second. Two to four active customers now can share 1 megabit, and as AT&T signs on more customers, it will increase the amount of bandwidth, said Michael Keith, chief executive officer and president of AT&T’s fixed wireless division.
The technology transmits voice and data signals between a base station and a small antenna installed on the exterior of a customer’s home using 10 megahertz of spectrum at the 1900 MHz personal communication services frequency band, which eliminates the need for line-of-sight. The technique is derived from technology used by the U.S. military, and no other company at the moment has it, AT&T said.
Trials of the fixed wireless service have been taking place in Dallas during the last 10 to 12 months. Still, there is some surprise over how aggressively AT&T seems to be moving the project along, in part because Project Angel dates back more than six years to McCaw Cellular Communications Inc., before it was bought by AT&T.
“I don’t think there was a lot of news leading up to it. It’ll be very interesting to see if this is really a full commercial deployment,” said John Zahurancik, vice president of broadband information at The Strategis Group, Washington, D.C.
Keith said better engineering has helped to drive down the cost per customer to about $770, enabling AT&T to commence service sooner. He expects the cost per customer to be further reduced to $550 during the next five years.
“Since the December timeframe we really decided to ramp it up. The capital involved has been reduced by 30 percent,” Keith said. “When we looked at the product, we had it designed under the techniques that were five to six years old. Using all the current technology, we redesigned the product to include data services as well as voice.”
That is a move which intrigues Zahurancik, who also thinks Sprint Corp.’s and MCI WorldCom Inc.’s imminent national launch of multichannel multipoint distribution service has put the pressure on AT&T to enter the seemingly unstoppable wireless broadband market.
“The interesting part is they’re trying to offer a reasonable Internet access service. That puts it (fixed wireless) in pretty good standing with cable modems and DSL,” he said. “The biggest problem with DSL is getting customers turned on as fast as they want it. I think there is still a lot of opportunity for several operators and technology to come into that market. Nobody has locked up that market at all.”
AT&T’s cable business, which is being upgraded to provide local telephony, only covers 50 percent of the U.S. market, and the company has said it wants to use fixed wireless to penetrate the rest.
“The more they can get customers on a network they control entirely, the better it is for them,” Zahurancik noted. “It’s one thing to make $35 a month for high-speed Internet access, but you’re really making $150 per month by having control of the network.”
Cost of the service starts at $26 a month and includes unlimited local calling, in-state long-distance rates of 7 cents per minute, as well as 7 cents per minute for all direct-dialed state-to-state calls. Additional phone lines are available for $7 per month, and high-speed data service is available for $35 a month.
“At the moment the data customers are going to find it attractive. If there’s a crying need, it isn’t for our long-distance service,” Keith said.
AT&T said it will offer the fixed-wireless service in four major cities and two minor cities by the end of this year, although it was not specific about which cities. Keith predicted the service to be in 1.5 million homes next year, 10 million homes in 2002 and 15 million homes the year after that.
Once the residential service launches get under way, the service will be offered to small business customers as well. Keith said, “For every 100 customers, there are 10 small businesses that it will meet its needs.”
