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AT&T Says WiMAX may be a Primary Choice for Rural Broadband
AT&T is apparently considering using WiMAX to help leverage broadband to its rural customers outside affordably deployable DSL coverage zones.
Massive telco AT&T, which is a major player in mobile wireless considers WiMAX to be among its top options to affordably deliver broadband wireless service to rural customers.
While fixed WiMAX is not the only technology AT&T is considering extending or replacing copper in rural areas (with cellular femtocells being one), it is amongst the bet alternatives. So how would AT&T deploy? The company currently holds 22 licenses in the 2.3 GHz spectrum range, mostly in Southern States. There are deployments in Alaska and in Nevada as well in this spectrum. Through the old BellSouth company, AT&T has already deployed a number of Southern towns with service using Navini radios. Its Alaskan operation uses Alvarion and its Pahrump, Nevada system is being run on SOMA networks radios.
Would AT&T have enough spectrum assets to deploy widely in its rural markets? Likely not in the 2.3 GHz range. However AT&T could consider using some of its wide footprint of 700 MHz frequencies as well although the use of those bands for this purpose might not be ideal.
As a rural broadband wireless specialist (well sometimes anyway) I have to applaud AT&T for considering this. There are still many Americans in small towns that have little or no broadband option at all, and a fixed WiMAX solution could be ideal for service delivery in these markets. One of my big frustrations is to see so much licensed spectrum in these areas lie fallow because carriers don't see a good business case for deploying it, or they are just focused on more customer dense markets.
Kudos to AT&T.
Tim Sanders
The Final Mile
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Kudos Indeed
I thought my prayers had been answered when I discovered that my local Verizon cell tower had been upgraded to support EVDO. I quickly rushed to the store and purchased the service. The downloads and latency were great for a couple of months, but then all the other broadband starved people in my area seemed to have made the same move, as now the poor lone T1 attached to the tower is extremely overtaxed, downloads are sad in comparison, and the latency is worse than dialup!
Hurry AT&T, and anyone else out there.. we need WiMAX yesterday!