AT&T to bundle broadband and cellular service
What’s been happening for a while now in Europe (mobile phone operators bundling DSL and landline VOIP service together with cellular service) is finally coming to the US. The Wall Street Journal reports:What’s been happening for a while now in Europe (mobile phone operators bundling DSL and landline VOIP service together with cellular service) is finally coming to the US. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Consumers will have a choice of signing up for a new package of cellphone and Internet service rather than just the traditional bundle of land-line phone and Internet service, the company says. Until now AT&T had worried about cannibalizing its land-line phone business. AT&T has also been testing cellphones that can run on Wi-Fi networks when at home, letting consumers save money on their cellphone bills and potentially get better reception indoors.
What’s interesting to see is whether AT&T enters the muni Wi-Fi market aggressively. They won the bid in Riverside together with MetroFi. I cannot imagine a mobile operator like Cingular (which is part of AT&T and is critical to AT&T’s profitability) would be so thrilled to see people making free calls on a citywide Wi-Fi network or circumventing their expensive mobile data plans.
I have recently had the horrible experience of accessing my email via GPRS while outside the Netherlands — very slow and expensive (see my post). It’s Wi-Fi for me from now on.
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My understanding is the wifi/cell phones being considered home to a particular wifi box in the home. If you can’t reach the local cell tower in your home (not uncommon in the US), you can reach the wifi box and then voip to your voip plan through that provider. You can’t use the phone for arbitrary voip calls to random wifi hotspots.
more walled garden…
Steve,
The French operators – Iliad/Free, France Telecom and Neuf/Cegetel – offer a similar service where you can use your VOIP/Wi-Fi home phone to make voice calls (but via their Wi-Fi/DSL walled garden service).
France Telecom goes one step further because it owns Wanadoo, a large ISP and Orange, a mobile phone operator. France Telecom bundles wired DSL (via Wanadoo) and cellular phone service (through Orange). Orange in the Netherlands has been offering 30 EUR per month DSL+landline VOIP.
What’s interesting is that Iliad/Free expressed interest in buying the last cellular license in France. Note that Iliad/Free already has a nationwide WiMAX license in France, and has announced plans to roll out FTTH in several French cities, starting with Paris, where they recently bought Paris-based CiteFibre (an FTTH company).
There is much more competition in the wired and wireless (cellular) markets here in Europe. I think the AT&T merger is not good for competition in the US and am surprised to see that it got FCC approval. I do not believe that the “net neutrality concessions” made by AT&T will do anything to bring real competition in the market for high-speed broadband and mobile phone service.