Fast Forward: Eric Shepcaro

AT&T

Although it opposes the idea of municipalities building their own Wi-Fi networks, AT&T earlier this year decided to partner with those cities and towns that sought to outsource Wi-Fi. Last week, AT&T announced its second city customer — Riverside, Calif. — and is talking with many more. Wi-Fi factors into the overall AT&T broadband strategy, according to Eric Shepcaro, AT&T's vice president of business strategy and development, and what's more, AT&T hopes to knit together its existing in-building operations, AT&T Wi-Fi, with outdoor networks to create a seamless environment over which it can offer business applications, including voice services. Shepcaro spoke with Editor-at-Large Carol Wilson last week.

On where Wi-Fi fits into the overall broadband strategy: Municipal Wi-Fi is part of our integrated capabilities providing high-speed access to our customers. We already have an indoor strategy — we have 34,000 deployments of access nodes for indoor venues. Plus, we have other indoor options, including DSL, HSDPA with Cingular, and we have WiMAX and wireless satellite broadband services. Wi-Fi is part of the holistic strategy to serve customers in the way that makes the most sense.

On muni Wi-Fi: I wouldn't say we are going after this market on a grand scale. Our strategy is to continue to evaluate city-by-city to determine where we'll bid or participate or where we will proactively go in and expand our capabilities around Wi-Fi or our cellular technology. I would say we are talking with several dozen cities, but we are focused in on a dozen good-sized cities. This is not just about going in and responding to an RFP — we look at our assets, where we think it makes the most sense. From a strategy perspective, we have 34,000 hotspots and venues [in partnership with Wayport] (see story on page 20), and we want to sync that up and have an integrated Wi-Fi experience.

On video over Wi-Fi: That's not something we are doing now. Clearly down the road, if I'm sitting in a city park that has broadband wireless, and U-verse is offered in that city, and I am a subscriber, I will be able to watch. Mobile video overall is very interesting to us, whether it uses Wi-Fi or HSDPA.

On VoIP over Wi-Fi: I would say that VoIP is one of the potential applications to ride over this infrastructure just as video is. Before we would offer VoIP or anything else, we are going to test and make sure that we have the quality, reliability and performance that are core to all of our offers. We are collectively working across the company — AT&T and Cingular — and looking at fixed/mobile convergence — including seamless mobility, dual-mode handsets and converged applications — to address our consumer and business requirements. Some of those things are going into prototyping and testing, others we are going to wait until we believe the technology is ready. I think we could see fixed/mobile convergence in 2007-2008 time frame — I wouldn't say early on in 2007, but later. Dual-mode handsets are out there today, but they are expensive. The devices will continue to be deployed, they will come down in cost and price and be able to seamlessly support service.

On Wi-Fi applications: We will be offering Wi-Fi applications. Clearly, first responder, public safety — those are key applications. We've all read about automatic meter reading, and there is what we have been doing with RFID — tagging and sensor-based networks. That, to me, is the real exciting thing, machine-to-machine communications — that's a $50 billion market. For all of that to occur over these wireless networks is a real opportunity for AT&T but also a real opportunity to automate processes for our customers — businesses and municipalities — to take costs out and let them be more efficient and more productive.