Will AT&T Marry CDMA and WiFi with VoIP?

When AT&T Wireless was spun off a few years back by AT&T, the big T did a licensing deal with them for the AT&T name. With the sale of AT&T Wireless to Cingular, the name, not the network still belonged to AT&T, sans wireless.

Now AT&T, not more than a few months before the deal is fully consummated, is sprinting back into the wire which they're not virgins at.

Through a non-exclusive agreement with Sprint PCS, AT&T will take a page out of Richard Branson's Virgin Mobile and offer CDMA based service throughout the United States as a MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator.)

The deal means AT&T markets the service and bills, but all the calls ride over the Sprint PCS access and transport network, but unlike Virgin's MVNO play, AT&T will leverage their own backbone and provide all of the backroom operations, enhanced services, and more.

What does this mean to VoIP you ask? The secret may reside with the assets of AT&T’s investment in Cometa which despite not having any successes to really crow about, may put AT&T in position to fill in the gaps between cellular and broadband based VoIP once a combination CDMA and VoIP-Wi-Fi phone hits the market.

AT&T used to be the phone company everywhere you went before divestiture in the 1980’s. It seems they are making moves and investments to become that company again.

Note: I've refreshed this, as some additional information has come to my attention. Accuracy in reporting is something I beleive in. When I have a fact wrong and I learn that, I'll be the first to say I was wrong and correct things. Many other blogs don't.

Comments

[Craig Poschmann]

Is Voice-over-Powerline ever going to gain traction or is WiSIP just going to make powerline obsolete? I heard over the past couple years about powerline voice, but haven't seen any traction, whatsoever.

[Dwayne Lofftit]

There is no doubt att is on the right track. They have only one problem with this stategy.

OVERHEAD.

Small upstart can do the same thing for 25% the cost. Constomer service will not be great but it is all off the shelf. I expect to see vonage become an mvno soon.