SAN ANTONIO (WiMAX Day). As part of the negotiations to receive approval for the merger of AT&T and BellSouth, AT&T agreed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that it would divest its valuable 2.5 GHz spectrum, which was targeted for use with WiMAX, leaving the company with a small, but significant, holding of 2.3 GHz spectrum.

The new AT&T, now the largest US telecoms company, also agreed with the FCC that by the end of 2007, it would offer broadband Internet access to all households in markets where it operates. In order to achieve such coverage on a short deadline, AT&T will use WiMAX to extend broadband coverage to rural, remote and hard-to-reach areas.

Jason Hillery, an AT&T spokesman specialising in technology, told WiMAX Day recently, “AT&T is committed to making the benefits of broadband available to all residential and business customers in its 22-state local service territory.”

Long before the current merger, both AT&T and BellSouth had launched pre-WiMAX services, and today the new company has pre-WiMAX services deployed in 18 cities, including urban and suburban areas of Atlanta and New Orleans, and states such as Texas and Florida.

Building on its strengths
WiMAX became a principal focus at AT&T under the reign of its former chief technology officer and CIO, Hossein Eslambolchi, who believed that WiMAX would “bring about changes of biblical proportions in the way we communicate with each other.” WiMAX remains an important technology for AT&T, and the company is “heavily involved in the development and evolution of WiMAX standards,” according to Hillery.

AT&T enjoys a leading position in the US broadband access market, and will draw upon WiMAX to strengthen its market share. “AT&T uses WiMAX where they don’t have wired broadband deployed,” says Daryl Schoolar, a senior analyst at US-based consultancy In-Stat.

Yet the loss of its 2.5 GHz spectrum significantly limits the ability of AT&T to achieve nationwide coverage, and will force the company to focus on integrating WiMAX with its current services, differentiating it from those of Sprint Nextel or Clearwire. “If Sprint’s WiMAX were an automobile, it would be a Porsche SUV, trying to be all things and flashy, while WiMAX from AT&T will be a vehicle that can bring you from point A to point B,” Schoolar said.

Yet WiMAX is set to become an integral part of the AT&T broadband strategy, and will help to enable “the widespread availability of broadband in the US,” Hillery says. “Ultimately, AT&T is focused on delivering anytime, anywhere access to communications services and applications, combining wireline and wireless access solutions.”

Eventually WiMAX will become integrated with all technologies employed by AT&T, including Wi-Fi and 3G. “AT&T is working to converge its access networks onto a single IP/MPLS backbone infrastructure. This means that, increasingly, customers will be able to access applications anytime and anywhere. There may be several access technologies involved, but that will be increasingly transparent to customers,” Hillery added.