Remember how Washington's technocrats promised to open local telephone markets to competition last year? Well, not much has happened.
At least, not until AT&T plowed into the market.
In March, AT&T announced a fixed wireless local-loop technology, codenamed Angel, that will take long distance voice and data calls, convert them into digital information, and send the data to local destinations via its wireless network. Beta testing in Chicago is set for this summer, with a planned nationwide rollout in 1998.
Angel not only bypasses the RBOCs, but AT&T reports it's cheap, too. The estimated cost of building a wireless/wireline hybrid would be about US$1,000 per customer, $500 less than wireline. "Angel saves AT&T a significant amount of money, and it puts them on a faster track to enter the market," says Mark Lowenstein of The Yankee Group.
And this should make the Bells and other local monopolies shudder. AT&T is already the largest provider of wireless services in the US with 7 million cellular subscribers. Add to that the $1.7 billion in PCS licenses it acquired last year, and this telecom giant is roaring louder than ever.
ELECTRIC WORD
A Giant Crashes into the Local Loop
