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AT&T Launches GPRS
from the Last-to-adopt-GSM-first-to-launch-GPRS dept
AT&T launched its new GSM/GPRS serivce in Seattle today. This is significant for a number of reasons. First, they are the third national US carrier to support GSM (Voicestream and parts of Cingular). In theory this means that US wireless consumers will be able to take advantage of the worldwide support for GSM and have access to cooler handsets and services and be able to easily roam internationally with one wireless number. In addition, the announcement is significant in that AT&T was the last to commit to GSM, but has beat the incumbant GSM carriers in introducing packet-switched data services. GPRS itself is interesting in that it should enable much more interesting data services than we have today that are charged per bytes transferred and always online. GPRS will also compliment upcoming support for Bluetooth at which point we’ll really need Dockers Mobile Pants for our personal area networks.
