This Bloomberg account of AT&T/GRIC deal creates misunderstanding far and wide: This account of the deal by which AT&T will offer GRIC software to its business customers who already buy VPN service AT&T makes it sound like AT&T is building 2,000 hot spots by fourth quarter instead of giving its customers software from GRIC that will allow them to access 2,000 hot spots that GRIC has in its partner network.
Unfortunately, the Bloomberg story has spread far and wide because they're a wire service for business. The first part of the story comes from the press release language (or their spin) in which GRIC attempts to sell the world on the notion that they're something other than they are.
GRIC is an aggregator: they own no infrastructure; they put hardware into ISPs to enable their software to work with those ISPs network and handle authentication.
Later in the story, the writer says, AT&T CEO Dorman said last month that AT&T would pepper the 50 largest U.S. cities with 20,000 Wi-Fi hot spots by 2005. In fact, he was talking about Cometa, a joint venture with Intel and IBM, a network on which AT&T will resale access. But its not building out those points; Cometa is.
Glenn,
We ran the story on AT&T a few days back after it broke on the KenRadio "World Technology RoundUp" and one of the points we made was the confusion about the "AT&T 801.11b strategy." Between their investment in Cometa, which I really think is the network they acquired from IBM back in the late 90s, their AT&T Wireless play, which includes the Denver Airport and not much else, it appears that this deal with Gric likely has more to do with expanding or enabling GRIC customers to "dial up" on AT&T's data network, as much as it does to have AT&T's dial up customer be able to go "wireless at 2,000 Gric hot spots." I suggest after more reflection than I had time for when we recorded the broadcast, that the announcement was more of a "we have to counter Verizon's announcement and show the street we're a player too."
I feel this way because the COMETA story is being so poorly explained to the media, let alone the public, other than what's going on with McDonalds...
P.S. Gee, I guess business people want to go to a place where kids run down the aisles milk shake in hand.....That's I can't wait to see the IT managers face when an exec walks in and says, "honest, it wasn't my milkshake..." A latte can be explained, but ice cream...
Stay Connected,
Andy Abramson
Senior Editor and Co-Host, "World Technology RoundUp"