AT&T said Tuesday that the wireless carrier will expand its Wi-Fi hot-zone pilot project through the launch of additional Wi-Fi hot zones in New York City near Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Moreover, AT&T said it will expand its coverage of Times Square as well as launch a new Wi-Fi hot zone in San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center.
AT&T’s project has been providing supplemental mobile broadband coverage in the downtown areas of New York City; Charlotte, N.C.; and Chicago since May. AT&T customers with qualifying wireless data, LaptopConnect and AT&T High Speed Internet plans continue to receive unlimited access to all these hot zones at no additional cost, noted AT&T Senior Vice President Angie Wiskocil.
Mitigating iPhone Congestion
Heavy broadband consumption by data superusers — particularly from AT&T subscribers equipped with Apple’s iPhone — has been a major headache for AT&T for the past two years. “Our network today supports more integrated devices than any of our competitors and more data traffic than any of our competitors,” said Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T’s Mobility and Consumer division.
Piper Jaffray estimates that 80 percent of the smartphones sold by AT&T in this year’s third quarter were iPhones. Moreover, the firm’s analysts predict that AT&T will sell more than 15 million iPhones for all of 2010.
To help mitigate data bottlenecks in congested urban areas, AT&T has been devoting special attention to its initial Wi-Fi efforts in the downtown areas of New York City, Charlotte and Chicago. During the past six months, AT&T customers made more than 350,000 connections at these three hot zones, noted AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donovan.
“The pilot demonstrated the clear benefits of having fast and readily available Wi-Fi options for our customers and our network, and so we have decided to deploy hot zones in more locations,” Donovan said….