AT&T Alascom has launched WiMAX-based broadband service in Juneau, Alaska and, according to a company news release, that’s just the beginning. Hmmmm‚Äö?Ѭ?is AT&T hedging its bets against the Sprint-Nextel/Clearwire partnership?AT&T Alascom has launched WiMAX-based broadband service in Juneau, Alaska and, according to a company news release, that’s just the beginning. Hmmmm‚Äö?Ѭ?is AT&T hedging its bets against the Sprint-Nextel/Clearwire partnership?
I suspect it is. AT&T would be foolish not to dabble in WiMAX. More than a few good companies have lost their markets by refusing to embrace changing trends and technologies. This particular deployment comes from AT&T Alascom, a regional AT&T subsidiary, but the press release accompanying the announcement hints that AT&T is prepared to embrace elsewhere.
In a lengthy news release giving details of the Alaska deployment, there’s a statement near the bottom that says:
That’s sufficiently vague to cover a lot of bases but I think it’s a good guess that the company is positioning itself to meet or match the competition if and when WiMAX takes off. I’d be interested in your comments, meanwhile you might want to check out what others had to say.
Click here to read AT&T’s press release.
Click here to read what ComputerWorld had to say about the deployment.
Click here to read what Broadband Reports had to say.
What your analysis glosses over is that, like Sprint and Clearwire, AT&T has a LOT of “Mobile WiMax compatible” spectrum licenses in the 2.3 GHz band – easily a national footprint that they could now deploy at will using Mobile WiMAX gear off-the-shelf from quality vendors like Alvarion and Navini. While this is perhaps the first time AT&T has deployed a commercial, revenue Mobile WiMAX system, it’s not… by FAR, the first Broadband Wireless Internet Access (proprietary predecessors to Fixed and Mobile WiMAX) that the entities (BellSouth) that now make up AT&T have previously deployed.