AT&T Mobility appears to be following its rival Verizon in terms of its preparations for rolling out its LTE network, although it is happening a year later.
Like Verizon, AT&T recently chose Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson as its LTE vendors, but is also establishing LTE innovation centers, just like Verizon did last April. The operator plans to launch innovation centers later this year in conjunction with its LTE trial networks in three locations it will name at another date, including two in the U.S. and one international facility. AT&T said the centers will be constructed to enable AT&T scientists and engineers to work with device makers, application developers and network equipment providers to speed up the development of an ecosystem of mobile and wired broadband services for consumers and business users. AT&T said third-party developers will be access a range of AT&T services and network capabilities to help with development of new applications.
In an interview with Connected Planet, AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donovan said the operator will also open up its U-Verse IPTV platform to infrastructure suppliers, device manufacturers and application developers.
AT&T is expected to launch LTE commercially in the second half of 2011, but it likely working to push that date earlier to compete with Verizon.
For more:
- check out this Connected Planet article
- read this AT&T release
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Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson win Verizon LTE deal
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AT&T nears record with 2.7M net adds in Q4
AT&T & LTE vs. T-Mobile & HSPA+ = Fight!