AT&T Wireless chief calls for fixed-wireless standards

The fixed-wireless broadband industry must coalesce around a set of standards to reduce equipment costs and facilitate deployment, said Michael Keith, president/CEO of AT&T Fixed Wireless Services, speaking at this week’s Wireless Communications Association (WCA) convention in Boston.

“It is a key aspect of this industry that the operators work together and set standards,” Keith said, noting that the wireless industry competes with itself with multiple technology offerings when it should be competing with last-mile cable and DSL providers.

“Our competition isn’t in this room. I believe competition runs across the last mile,” he said, suggesting that bundled voice and data services will effectively differentiate wireless as an attractive competitive offering, because noting that cable is an entertainment-based industry and telephone is voice-based.

“Our industry is uniquely positioned to compete,” he said. “We’re the only industry that comes right from the beginning focused on the spectrum.”

AT&T’s strategy is to deliver converged services to small-medium business (SMB) customers and migrate to the residential market, he said. In both instances, it will compete for last-mile business with incumbent telephone and cable operators that already offer data services.

“The market opportunity is very, very large when you think about voice and data coming together,” he said. “In the end, there can only be three technologies, and we’re the third technology.”

Keith also updated the industry on where AT&T stands in the fixed-wireless industry. AT&T is offering service in nine cities with circuit-switched voice technology that will migrate eventually to IP because IP is a “killer application and a differentiator that the telco can’t do and cable isn’t doing.”

AT&T expects to double its first quarter total of 15,000 subscribers by the end of the second quarter and hit 100,000 by year end, he said. It strategically places towers, then markets a $66 service that includes two voice lines and data to a generally receptive audience of commercial and residential users.

“Almost every other month, we’re adding a new marketplace,” he said. “It ends up being a substantial business.”

The drawbacks, he said, are tower siting--“always a big problem”--dealing with local telephone companies--“an incredible pain”--and expensive equipment.

Towers, he said, must just be placed carefully to immediately serve a market need and enroll paying subscribers. A “new regulatory policy” is needed to deal with the local phone companies, especially when it comes to number portability. And, he emphasized, equipment costs will decline when products are standardized.

“Now it’s time for us all to work together closer than we ever have,” he concluded.