Andy Seybold on AT&T Wireless.
Note: I have transcribed the segment below from the audio clip at the following link:
abcnews.go.com
Several weeks ago, I speculated on the rumor that AT&T Wireless might change their technology roadmap, and also that NTT DoCoMo might invest in them. This past week, both of these things happened, although the changes in their technology roadmap are not going to happen exactly as I suggested. Instead of AT&T Wireless announcing that they were changing out their TDMA system in favor of GSM/GPRS, the European standard, they added GSM/GPRS to their roadmap, and they also added wideband CDMA, or UMTS 3rd generation technology as well.
The result of adding these two technologies is that AT&T will have the most complex wireless network in existence as they move forward. Picture this: On their 800 mhz systems, they will continue to support analogue cellular, as they are required to do by law, use TDMA technology for digital voice services, and continue to support cellular digital packet data for wireless data. On their 1900 mhz systems, they will augment their existing TDMA voice service with GSM/GPRS for voice and data.
While they claim that GPRS will permit them to offer 115 kilobits/sec data, the reality is the true data rate will be closer to 30 kilobits/sec. So before they even start rolling out their 3rd generation services, they will be supporting three different flavors of voice technology: analogue, TDMA, and GSM, and two different types of data access: CDPD and GPRS. From hereon out, it really gets messy. Moving towards 3rd generation services, they have chosen to continue to try to deploy a technology called EDGE, which I understand may not even be viable, and also overlay wideband CDMA or UMTS 2000.
If they actually deploy all of these technologies, they will then be supporting five different voice technologies, and four different data technologies. And they're promoting this roadmap as a clean migration path to the future? I have to ask myself how they could possibly have come up with this type of system design. It is most complex mix of wireless technologies ever proposed and the cost to implement all of this will be higher for both AT&T and the consumer. Handset vendors are going to have a hard time trying to figure out what types of devices to build and customers are going to have to understand in which markets each of the various technologies are available and when. Consumers will have to trade out their handsets at least once, if not up to three times as this network evolves.
If, as I believe, EDGE never sees the light of day, then the design of the network becomes somewhat more realistic, but it will still be made up of four different voice technologies and three data modes. How did they ever dream up this design? The answer is they are trying to please many different groups of folks. For NTT DoCoMo's billions, they have agreed to move to wideband CDMA for their 3rd generation network because that is what NTT DoCoMo wants to have happen.
AT&T Wireless is also going to be working with NTT DoCoMo to deploy the very successful i-mode wireless internet access which is one of the reasons they have chosen GSM/GPRS. NTT DoCoMo's infusion of almost $10 billion for 16% of the company will please Wall Street as will the faster deployment of the 3rd generation technology. And TDMA and EDGE were left in the mix to appease the rest of the TDMA carriers who would be left in the lurch if the largest TDMA carrier in the world walked away from it.
So AT&T Wireless has devised a plan that is all things to all people except in all of this they seem to have forgotten the customer -- the customer who is going to have to pay more for their phones, the customer who is going to have to trade up to new phones several times, and the customer who won't have as many choices when it comes to phones and other wireless devices on the AT&T network as they will on networks will fewer technologies.
AT&T's competitors should be heaving a sigh of relief. Instead of forcing some of them to follow in AT&T's footprint, they will be able to concentrate instead on their own technology course, and perhaps on picking up a number of AT&T customers as well.
For ABCNews.com, this is Andy Seybold.
Andrew Seybold is a consultant and top computer industry analyst and is considered by many to be the leading authority on the mobile computing industry. |
