AT&T customers will soon be able to make calls from their smartphones over Wi-Fi, after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) provided the carrier with a waiver.
Issued yesterday, the Wi-Fi calling waiver arrives after
AT&T complained about its competitors enabling the feature on their networks without abiding by certain rules, something the waiver allows AT&T to bypass for a limited period of time.
Earlier this week, AT&T filed a complaint with the FCC over the need to add TTY (Teletypewriter) support to the Wi-Fi calling system, in order to allow people with hearing impediments to make calls using specialized equipment. AT&T intends to replace it with another technology called real-time text (RTT), which is currently not taken into account in the FCC regulations, but is highly favored by AT&T and other parties.
The granted waiver allows AT&T to roll out Wi-Fi calling to its subscribers without the TTY requirement until the end of 2017, or until new rules come into force allowing an alternative system to be used, such as RTT. Despite being granted the waiver, AT&T is not letting go of the fact that neither Sprint nor T-Mobile offer TTY or have waivers for their own Wi-Fi services, suggesting the FCC is performing "asymmetric regulation."
"We are left scratching our heads as to why the FCC still seems intent on excusing the behavior of T-Mobile and Sprint, who have been offering these services without a waiver for quite some time," reads a
statement from AT&T senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs Jim Cicconi. "Instead of initiating enforced action against them, or at least opening an investigation, the agency has effectively invited them to now apply for similar waivers and implied that their prior flaunting of FCC rules will be ignored."
It is unclear when AT&T will bring Wi-Fi calling to its customers, but considering it is a software change and that it was
previously tested with some iOS 9 beta users, it may come out sooner rather than later.
Top