[Correction: According to AT&T, de la Vega said the wireless broadband speeds available would be 15 Mbps, NOT 50 Mbps, as it said in the transcript from Seeking Alpha, from which the information from this report was drawn.]
If its acquisition of DirecTV is approved, AT&T plans to dedicate spectrum for a fixed wireless broadband complement to satellite TV services, according to comments made by AT&T Mobility president and CEO Ralph de la Vega on Friday.
He also said signaled that AT&T has no interest in building out Wi-Fi networks. AT&T is content to let cable companies do that, and is happy to strike backhaul agreements.
“All of a sudden, once this deal gets done, I have a complete nationwide footprint to sell into and to bundled products and services” de la Vega said. He said he expects to target rural areas, where high-speed wireline broadband tends to be lacking.
De la Vega’s comments were from his address and subsequent Q&A at the Sachs Communicopia Conference. Comments were drawn from a transcript provided by Seeking Alpha.
He said such a bundle is already technologically feasible. “We’re still playing around with the speeds and it depends on the actual spectrum that we have in each market. But they’ll be significantly higher than what you’re seeing today on LTE, because it will be dedicated spectrum. You can think about 15 megabits and above,” de la Vega said.
If the deal goes through about when expected, AT&T might start rolling out the bundled service as early as the end of next year.
Asked if the cable industry’s focus on Wi-Fi networking is a threat to mobile operators, de la Vega responded, “we’ve always been a big proponent of Wi-Fi from day one because we thought it was healthy to have some of the traffic offloaded to Wi-Fi and we think that’s perfectly fine. It’s a great complement to the network capabilities that we have.”
He said AT&T will use Wi-Fi calling in 2015, “but only as a complement. We cover 200 million people. Everybody that buys a mobile share value plan gets unlimited talk and text. So we don’t have this burning desire for the need of coverage or for other reason to go aggressively after Wi-Fi.”
He said AT&T is also implementing Wi-Fi calling and VoLTE (voice over LTE).
De la Vega also talked up the company’s Connected Car program, which has dozens of car companies involved. He said Telefónica wants to replicate AT&T’s home automation and monitoring product, Digital Life, and AT&T is planning a trial with them.
“And so I think the opportunity is there because we invested early and because not only us, but other people see now the growth opportunity,” he said.
