PARIS-AT&T Wireless Services Inc.’s technology future was brought into question last week as were the carrier’s upcoming third-quarter financial results.
Speaking at the UMTS and Mobile Internet conference in Paris, Leo Nikkari, AT&T Wireless’ director of 3G industry relations, said the carrier had yet to see demand for wideband-CDMA in the United States., even though the carrier has contractual obligations to partner NTT DoCoMo Inc. to launch a certain number of W-CDMA-based markets by mid-2004.
“We don’t see anything in the market driving demand for Wideband CDMA,” Nikkari said. “I don’t see anything pushing us to an early W-CDMA launch.”
Nikkari noted AT&T Wireless has four to five years to look at W-CDMA and that in the meantime it is moving ahead with its plans to launch EDGE service next year.
AT&T Wireless tried to downplay Nikkari’s remarks, noting the carrier remained committed to W-CDMA and that it is beginning trials of the technology with Ericsson in its Dallas market later this year.
Lehman Brothers last week downgraded its expectations for AT&T Wireless Services Inc.’s third quarter, reducing forecasts for customer additions from around 300,000 subscribers to 65,000 net customer additions.
The investment house noted the cut was due to concern about integration of WorldCom Wireless subscribers being more challenging than anticipated because of lower-than-expected customer quality and a resulting increase in customer churn.
Lehman Brothers also said AT&T Wireless is experiencing greater competition in usually strong customer addition markets in California and Nevada from T-Mobile USA Inc., which launched service this summer in those markets through a partnership with Cingular Wireless L.L.C. Lehman Brothers reported T-Mobile, which surprised many by adding more than 500,000 customers during the second quarter, could add as many as 1 million net customers during the third quarter based on information from its European analysts.
