AT&T’s SVP of Investor Relations Richard Dietz spoke at Deutsche Bank’s Media and Telecom conference this morning and reiterated what other AT&T execs have said: Project Lightspeed networks have enough capacity for the forseeable future.
One fear about AT&T’s fiber-to-the-node architecture is that, with an average through-put of 25 Mbps, the system won’t be capable of ramping up as consumers demand more high-bandwidth services. This concern is particular true regarding AT&T’s ability to deliver faster and better high-speed Internet services. Comcast, Verizon and Cablevision Systems have already introduced services that offer 15 Mbps or more download rates.
According to Dietz, most consumers don’t need more than Lightspeed’s 6 Mbps/1 Mbps service, so AT&T should do just fine. “We believe 6 mbps downstream and 1 mbps upstream is plenty of bandwidth for most users,” he said.
The company is, however, contemplating adding a “bursty” bandwidth option that temporarily delivers more than 6 Mbps when consumers need it. “We haven’t foreclosed the possibility of providing our users with capabilities for bursty bandwidth.”
Moreover, “pair-bonding,” which couples two DSL lines together, can deliver up to 50 Mbps service to some customers. “With pair-bonding there is plenty of bandwidth,” he said.
AT&T will kick off its Project Lightspeed service, which has been in a controlled market launch, on a wider commercial basis in San Antonio later this month. Dietz said the pricing of the video option will be on par with what AT&T gets with its DirecTV offering. The price of the 6 Mbps service will be on par with comparable DSL services.
One small piece of news (at least new to me): AT&T is closely looking at voice-over-Wi-Fi services, trialing the option in corporate campuses. The company expects to start offering VoWiFi in 2007, although there are some technical hurdles to overcome. “When you’re in a hotel like this, your phone will sense a Wi-Fi connection and take it directly to a wireline network rather than to a radio tower,” Dietz said, making mobile phone calling more efficient.
VoWiFi uses “the network with the most capacity first, that being the wireline network.” The technical hurdle: producing dual-mode mobile phones that have enough battery capacity to satisfy consumers.
Cynthia Brumfield at 2:18 PM|Comments(0)
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