AT&T Cable
Services Wednesday announced plans to launch its first U.S. trial of
shared access to its hybrid fiber-coax network in November.
The stage is set for the six-month trial to resolve operational issues
inherent with shared cable access in Boulder, Colo.
Dubbed AT&T Broadband Choice, the trial will allow up to 500 consumers in
the Denver area to access AT&T and Excite@Home’s collaborative high-speed
cable access through their Internet service provider of choice.
Dan Somers, AT&T Broadband president and chief executive officer, said the
trial demonstrates AT&T’s leadership in the area of broadband choice.
“We were the first company in our industry to commit to choice, we were
first to agree to a set of principles with an unaffiliated ISP to provide
connectivity, and now we’re first to commit to a technical trial,” Somers said.
George Bell, Excite@Home chairman and chief executive
officer said the test market demonstrates that its infrastructure is
available to help partners such as AT&T deliver high-speed services to
multiple ISPs.
“It’s a post-exclusivity environment,” Bell said. “We look forward to
working with AT&T as well as other ISPs, relying on our more than five
years experience in scaling, handling large volumes of users and data, and
managing broadband networks.”
Richard Varnes, City of Boulder
telecommunications coordinator, said the trial was exciting news for the
online community in the area.
“With its technology emphasis and high Internet usage, we think Boulder
will make an ideal test bed for the trial,” Varnes said. “The city’s recent
study of community cable TV needs indicates that ISP choice is a high
priority in the community and we see this as an important step in that
direction.”
Susan Marshall, AT&T Broadband senior vice president of data services, said
the issues of ISP choice presents barriers to effective use of its network
which the company is striving to overcome.
“ISP choice presents unique challenges for the owners of hybrid
fiber-coaxial networks,” Marshall said. “Our trial is designed to
demonstrate how best to meet these challenges.”
As part of AT&T Broadband Choice, AT&T will create a special software
package that customers must install on their computers. The service agent
will allow trial participants to manage several aspects of their Internet
connection.
Ideally, testers will be able to use the AT&T broadband service agent to
select one or more ISPs, specify which connection speed they want, change
the connection speed later, and adjust speeds to match the capabilities of
devices they own.
Marshall said a lot of effort and preparation has been exerted to develop
the service agent and offer shared access.
“A lot of thought and work has gone into preparing for this trial,”
Marshall said. “We believe our strategy of creating the service agent is an
excellent way to allow for ISP choice by consumers and, at the same time,
give ISPs the control they need to tailor their services to consumer needs.”
AT&T Broadband sent offers to 10 national and regional ISPs seeking their
participation in the test market. America
Online Inc. , Dell.net, Denver News of The Denver
Post-Tribune, Excite@Home, Juno Inc.
, EarthLink
Inc. owned MindSpring Enterprises, Inc., Microsoft Corp.’s
MSN, RMI.net , AT&T Corp.
WorldNet service and Yahoo!, Inc.
may be
included in the Denver shared access trial.
Doug Hanson, RMI.net chief executive officer, said that price would
ultimately determine the future of shared access to cable networks in the U.S.
“If it is simply a matter of our buying retail services from Excite@Home or
RoadRunner as the case may be, then
we have to mark-up that cost to get a sufficient margin. That makes it
prohibitive to sell the service if we can not get a wholesale product from
AT&T,” Hanson said.
“If we can buy strictly a pipe or access to the customer so that we can put
our browser and our portal into the customer’s premise, and we can do so at
a competitive price, then I say great AT&T! You’ve done exactly what you
should do and that will increase your customer share,” Hanson said.
Sarah Duisik, AT&T Broadband spokesperson said that initially there would
be no charge for ISPs participating in the Denver trial.
“It’s not a full-blown market trial,” Duisik explained. “Each of the 10
ISPs invited to participate can have only 50 customers using the service,
for a total of 500. AT&T will pay for everything. We’ll address the issue
of pricing the service in the future.”
Duisik added that Denver was an ideal location for the cable sharing tests.
“AT&T chose Boulder because its close to technical expertise at AT&T
Broadband headquarters in Denver, and because it has less than 50,000 homes
passed,” Duisik said. “Denver also has a high PC penetration, so it made
for an ideal test market.”
AT&T Broadband’s exclusive contract with Excite@Home expires in the middle
of 2002. In March, AT&T agreed to extend its distribution relationship with
Excite@Home through 2008 and to feature Excite@Home as the preferred ISP on
its cable Internet service through the same period, while opening up AT&T’s
cable infrastructure to multiple ISPs.
Excite@Home said it would work with AT&T to provide connectivity services
to third party ISPs to deliver broadband services.
AT&T Broadband ranks as one of the nation’s largest broadband services
companies, providing television entertainment services to more than 11
million customers across in the U.S.
