Wednesday, June 25, 2014

AT&T Becoming a Big WISP

Garyy Kim looks at it from a couple of ways, but it looks like AT&T may become the largest WISP in the US (especially if it can acquire DirecTV).


In their SEC filing for acquiring DTV, ATT writes about WLL (wireless local loops). Basically, fixed LTE like VZW is pushing too. Screw an antenna array to residence to pick up LTE signals for in-home broadband, especially in rural markets where building out any kind of fiber - FTTN, FTTP, FTTH - is out of the question for these regions.


Buried in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission is this interesting promise: "the combined company will commit to deploy fixed wireless local loop (“WLL”) technology to bring high-speed broadband to approximately 13 million largely rural customer locations." [Gary Kim]


This is the promise to the FCC and DOJ: AT&T Might Add 12M High Speed Access Locations Outside its Fixed Network Footprint. MAY add. Yeah.


It's all part of the story that copper is unwarranted, useless, ancient. LTE is the wave of the future. Oh, and while you are at it, please give us 500 MHz of spectrum to deliver this on.

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