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AT&T Wireless Drops Fixed Wireless
n8twj writes: "According to this story at Internetnews.com, AT&T has decided to graciously bow out of the Fixed Wireless arena. This is a move that strands 47,000 of its customers, displaces its entire fixed wireless division staff and costs the company more than $1 billion." Iridium, Ricochet, and Sprint's ION are now gone or all-but-gone, too -- it's been a bad year for unconventional Internet service customers.
There is no real demand for fixed wireless over DSL or cable access. There is demand for high bandwidth, low latency, working service, fixed IP, no mandatory filters, easy set up, fast installs, and low price (clearly some of these things are more important to some people then others -- many don't care about fixed IP for example)
If you can offer a good set of those features people will be interested in it, whether it is DSL, fixed wireless, cable, or whatever. Very few people care what technology gives them what they want, most care that they get what they want!
Fixed wireless has an inherent advantage in "fast install" (you don't have to roll a truck and bury new wire), and maybe in more universal access (I'm just under 20K feet from my CO, and having trouble getting DSL now that Rhythms croaked).
I worked for a pure fixed wireless business on www.tele2.co.uk as a salesman and marketing manager. The problem is that there is so much fibre buried and phone lines already installed, that a new service struggles to cover even its operating costs. In most urban areas, the cheapest way to move data is to use existing infrastructure. Once you leave the city centre, trees obstruct fixed wireless so complaints rise every Spring of installations that were done in December-Febuary no longer being viable. This leads to a uninstalls along with a bad reputation. It destroys margin on sales.
Fixed wireless is a superb technology but the existing technologies make it very hard to deploy it econmoically.
Patrick
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
Iridium was bought out by a small company to service the large Department of Defence and US Governement contracts. The revenue from the US government is much larger that the cost to keep the Iridium constelation in orbit and in good repair. Becuase the 'new' Iridium dosen't have the debt burden of the old system - they can provide service at $1.50 a minuit. I use their service when I hike in the woods and need to keep in contact with my customers. The phones have been re-flashed and the voice quality is quite acceptable - it sounds like you're slighly muffeled, and now the phones can connect directly to the internet (unfortunatly only Windows is supported) in addition to connecting to an ISP. You can also send SMS messages to the phone.
Because the new service has almost no dept and plenty of revenue, I don't worry about them going bankrupt.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I have to say that it fits with all my other experiences with AT&T though. They are the cable TV provider in my area and they suck. The picture quality is even worse than the channel selection they "offer", and in fact is exceded in lack of quality only by their customer service. If I could get any reception with an antena at my house I would drop them entirely. Unfortunately I just can't justify the expense of DSS with as little TV as I watch.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
As an employee in the software dept of the sprint BWG (Broadband Wireless Group), I can also tell you that our devision has been hit by massive layoffs and we are expected to bring a halt to our over 50,000 customers within the next 6 months. Installations and future marketing plans have already been canceled.
Although the demise of Sprint ION was much heralded, I receive an E-mail from Sprint Broadband (SBB) the following day that informed me that SBB would no longer be accepting any new customers, either Business or Consumer. You can see for yourself at http://sprintbroadband.com/
This is a bummer really, as, since Sprint figured out how to do wireless, my service really cranks: 2Mbps down, and 500 Kbps up. Great Stuff. Unfortunately, I had to slog through 7 or 8 months of speeds slower than dial-up.
What really gets me about all of this is the contest between SBB, MCIW and AT&T. They were all out there buying up all the MMDS licenses they could. First, MCI bails out of the deal they were putting together with SBB a couple years back. SBB goes ahead and rolls out the service, and cannot meet demand. AT&T never really got off the ground.
One must ask, who put whomever in charge at these telco's? SBB makes $50 a month off of me and several thousand other people (and $150/month off of hundred's of business') in the 'Springs alone, and they cannot pay for the antenna's and equipment? Heck, it is even their fiber that serves the distribution antenna, so no cost to transport my packets is really incurred by having to lay cable to my house, or to they distribution antenna. Their revenues are about $1.8 million/year just in this area and they are suspending service aquisition. It is just a matter of time until they cut it off in whole. With a 35 mile reach, I would be trying to get as many people as possible onto this service. It is WAY cheaper than DSL to setup and support.
But hey, I am only the Capacity Planner at a teleconferencing company with a high growth rate, a large customer base, and lots of income. What do I know?
EOR (end of rant)
Gerald Roebke