AT&T Announces Breakthrough Wireless Technology : New Alternative for Local Service

By A STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON: AT&T announced the invention of a revolutionary fixed wireless technology to carry high-speed digital communications directly to most households across the country at many times the capacity of traditional copper wire. This technology breakthrough will give AT&T an important new option for competing to provide local service over its own facilities. During the past two years, AT&T has acquired through FCC auctions the licenses for the 10 MHz radio spectrum it needs to provide the new technology to customers in more than 93 percent of the United States.

In remarks before the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners here, AT&T President John Walter said, "We are announcing the creation of what we believe will be the communications medium for the 21st century. This is the first major technology breakthrough for the new AT&T, continuing the company’s heritage of innovation and positioning AT&T as the communications leader for the next century."

Developed jointly by AT&T Wireless Services and AT&T Labs, the new technology is a fixed wireless system that can provide consumers high-quality, secure wireless communications to and from their homes at speeds many times faster than existing telephone lines. The fixed wireless system will initially provide each household with two phone lines and the capability for high-speed Internet access at 128 kilobits per second. The technology includes sophisticated encryption capability to protect consumers’ privacy and prevent fraud.

Consumers will be able to use their existing touchstone wired telephones and keep their current phone numbers. The new technology will give consumers the ability to use their wireless phones as extensions in their hones at local service rates. They also can use the same wireless phones for mobile service in areas served by AT&T’s wireless network paying mobility rates.

The new system will connect a consumer’s home to an AT&T digital switching center via a neighbor-hood antenna mounted on a utility pole or other structure. A single antenna will serve up to 2,000 homes. The only new equipment required on the customer’s house is a transceiver about the size of a pizza box that can be mounted on the side or back of a house.

Engineers at AT&T Wireless Services began developing the new system in 1994; the company will begin a beta test in metropolitan Chicago later this year. AT&T Wireless Services is already manufacturing components for the system at its facilities in Redmond, Washington.

"We are combining the high speeds, large capacities and top voice quality that people have come to expect from fiber optics, but we’re doing it over radio waves," explained the system’s lead developer Nick Kauser, who is chief technology officer at AT&T Wireless Services and vice president of AT&T Labs. "In effect, we’ve created a wireless fiber optic system - something no one else has done."

Future uses of the new system may include faster data services and full-motion video-conferencing.

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