AT&T Deal Could Speed Move To Wireless Internet Calling

[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Amol Sharma amol.sharma@wsj.com and Li Yuan li.yuan@wsj.com]
AT&T's planned acquisition of BellSouth could help the combined telecom company push ahead with plans to offer a burgeoning service for consumers: the ability to make Internet calls using a cellphone. Internet calling has already taken off in the landline world, allowing millions of customers to save money by having their phone calls travel through the Internet instead of telephone landlines. Now, phone companies, wireless carriers, cable companies and start-ups are all developing services that will enable cellphone calls to travel over the Internet as well. As part of the system, a single handset would function as a cellphone on the road but could route calls over the Internet when in range of wireless high-speed Internet networks, or Wi-Fi, at home or in public "hot spots" such as airports, hotels, and coffee shops. Manufacturers like Nokia and Motorola have already introduced handsets that can do this, but neither said when the phones will be available in the U.S. Cingular Wireless, the largest U.S. cellphone service provider and currently a joint venture of AT&T and BellSouth, says it is exploring technologies to offer a hybrid phone that would use the Internet networks of AT&T and BellSouth. In the short run, the logistics of an AT&T-BellSouth merger could complicate Cingular's plans. But in the long term, integrating the two phone companies' billing and customer service could make it even easier to integrate the landline networks with wireless services, analysts say. In general, "having one owner makes governance simpler, and makes decision-making simpler," says Mark Siegel, a spokesman for Cingular.
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