The Red Herring writes, "While the communications industry has been waiting on a WiMAX standard for over a year, and companies have been worrying over the technology's place in the wireless world, AT&T is one of the biggest carriers around willing to envision a WiMAX future." The article explains that AT&T will be using the new "Rosedale" chipset from Intel to launch a small business-based WiMAX trial in Middletown, New Jersey, during May.

AT&T believes that WiMAX could very well compete with 3G and fiber. "Though the company has no plans to create a WiMAX offering for consumers, the technology’s higher speeds, an up to 70-mile range, and competitive low-priced roll-out costs could prove tempting even outside of the enterprise world."

AT&T will be looking at offering WiMAX based services to businesses in 2006. The offering would include "a new and advanced level of services for voice, data, and video and multimedia-type applications."

The article features a question and answer session with the CTO, Hossein Eslambolchi, of AT&T. Some of the questions include AT&T’s WiMAX plans, the potential of WiMAX to compete with fiber and 3G cellular networks, and how the various services will blend once the SBC merger is finalized.

You can read the full article here.