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.

Comments

Re:How much demand is there?

[stripes]

How much demand is there for fixed wireless? I've been considering starting a wireless ISP that would serve my local area, and I was thinking that no one would be willing to pay more money to switch from cable or DSL to wireless. This is what could have been the problem.

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).

Is it economically viable?

[Captain Kirk]

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

Iridium Is Not Gone

[zulux]

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.

as if I didn't hate AT&T already

[MrResistor]

Isn't this the third time this year that AT&T has left a large number of customers high and dry? It's really irritating to me when companies do that, but it's especially bad when the company is as spontaneous and unappologetic as AT&T has been about it.

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.