ENDLESS LOOP

AT&T's now-infamous Project Angel triggered fear and controversy when it was first exposed five years ago. It wasn't just that AT&T — the ranking behemoth in a land where most upstarts were merely concepts — was scheming to enter the residential local access business. It was that it was doing so secretly, inventing its own proprietary technology format and — here's the kicker — planning to invade local markets using its wireless spectrum.

The concept of fixed wireless was literally remote at the time: Generally known as wireless local loop, it was a networking format thought best-suited for far-flung locations that lacked sufficient landline telecom infrastructure. Some start-up hopefuls — most of them now liquidated or struggling to restructure their financials — were talking of using various versions of the format in their attempts to unseat the carriers serving U.S. business markets. But none of them was inventing its own version of the technology, and none of them was targeting residential markets. Most of all, none of them was AT&T.

Now everything has come full circle — for Project Angel and for the fixed wireless sector as a whole. AT&T launched service three years after the Project Angel revelation and put a smattering of customers on the system before halting expansion last year. AT&T had abandoned Angel for cable in its residential play, and the spun off AT&T Wireless ultimately decided to abandon it to concentrate on 3G mobile development. Last week, wireless technology developer Netro paid an estimated $45 million in cash and stock for the whole Angel package (see Toby Weber's story on page 16 for analysis of the deal).

The fixed wireless market in this country has sputtered and conked out time and again. Some still predict that another U.S. revival for the sector could accompany subsequent generations of the technology, but most service providers and technology developers have moved on to focus on lucrative projects in other parts of the world. To complete the cycle, Netro said its primary service provider targets for the Project Angel acquisition are in countries with less-established landline infrastructures — but the company also predicted that the U.S. fixed wireless market could make a comeback in a few years as costs for the technology come down.

The immaturity of the technology and the cost constraints of deployment have been the popular fixed wireless scapegoats in the U.S. for some time. Failing service provider outfits that relied on the technology pointed to those reasons, among others, on their way down. Even the fixed wireless Angel that once represented the promise of the sector is headed abroad. Maybe it's time to close the loop on fixed wireless in this country for good.