SAN ANTONIO (WiMAX Day). In the last two weeks, AT&T has issued conflicting statements about its support for the mobile WiMAX standard 802.16e.

Last week the company said it will extend its AT&T Yahoo! wireless broadband service to the tiny city of Pahrump in Nevada. The service will be deployed using equipment from Soma Networks. According to Soma, its equipment is pre-standard and will support 802.16e mobile WiMAX.

On November 9th, AT&T stated that it would end a trial of mobile WiMAX based on 802.16e in the Netherlands because the technology was not mature. At the time, Martin Silman, executive director of global market portfolio management for AT&T stated that the equipment available for 802.16e is only pre-standard, and there is no certification available yet for mobile WiMAX.

Setting the standard
The 802.16 group of standards was established by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for deployment in broadband Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks, or “WirelessMan”. Within this group there are two standards for WiMAX, one is 802.16d (also known as 802.16-2004) for fixed WiMAX, and the second is 802.16e for mobile WiMAX (also known as 802.16-2005).

The IEEE only make the specifications for the 802.16 standard. For equipment to be certified as compliant with this standard, the WiMAX Forum is responsible for providing certification of products that comply with the standard. The importance of these standards and certification ensure that products will be interoperable with equipment from other manufacturers.

AT&T has been deploying fixed WiMAX networks across America for the last year. According the press release issued by AT&T last week, “The WiMAX-ready deployment in Pahrump joins AT&T fixed wireless deployments in Alaska, Georgia, New Jersey and Texas,” all of which reportedly use fixed WiMAX certified equipment based on the 802.16d specification.

The statements made by AT&T are confusing especially since much of the equipment available for WiMAX today is or will soon be 802.16e compliant. Indeed, the vendors with whom AT&T has been reported to be testing equipment over the last year include Airspan, Navini, Aperto and Nortel, all of whom intend to have WiMAX Forum certification for their 802.16e products in the next year.

Spectrum under scrutiny
Some analysts last week surmised that the capricious outlook of AT&T may be due to the scrutiny it is undergoing at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Washington for the pending merger with BellSouth. This merger still has yet to be approved by the FCC, and at stake in the merger is the massive holding of 2.3 ~ 2.5 GHz spectrum owned by the two companies.

The spectrum in question would allow AT&T/Bellsouth to launch a mobile WiMAX network that will easily compete with Sprint and Clearwire in America, the later of which has actively lobbied against the merger.

The pressure from regulators and lobbyists may be one reason that AT&T may be trying to distance itself from mobile WiMAX. According to an analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York, AT&T may resolve itself to deployment of only fixed WiMAX for the immediate future and may even be forced to concede mobile WiMAX as part of its negotiations with the FCC.