AT&T rolls out pretty unimpressive 3G affair

IN PROBABLY THE LEASTambitious 3G claim ever, AT&T Wireless along with Japan's NTT DoCoMo say they will launch 'the first true 3G wireless data services based on W-CDMA technology in North America'.

Except, of course, they are giving their rivals a mere 24 months to beat them because the commercial launch won't take place until the end of December 2004 and then only in four cities - San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas and San Diego.

So why have they established a demo facility for W-CDMA in the AT&T Wireless office in New York then? Answer: when the two companies signed an investor agreement back in December 2000, one clause said clause that AT&T Wireless would launch W-CDMA based services in 13 of the top 50 wireless US cities by June 30 2004.

And this is the agreed amendment, having pumped a stack of dollars into AT&T Wireless, NTT expects at least some visible results.

Two years notice of an intended launch? It shows that Telcos' timescales are very different from the IT market and worlds apart from the Internet. µ