There's a little bit of mystery surrounding AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T)'s launch of the BlackBerry 8820 WiFi-enabled smartphone, due out late this summer.

BlackBerry made some play of the fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) capabilities of the new phone when it launched Tuesday afternoon. The Canadian device maker noted that the dualmode device supports the unlicensed mobile access (UMA) technology, pioneered by startup Kineto Wireless Inc. With a UMA system in place, the BlackBerry 8820 can switch voice calls between a wireless carrier's cellular network and a WiFi network, according to RIM. (See RIM Goes WiFi.)

AT&T, however, won't be drawn on whether it will use this capability to offer FMC services for 8820 users. "The only thing we're acknowledging at the moment is that we're launching it later this summer," an AT&T spokesman that deals with the devices tells Unstrung.

Our calls for a more general comment on the state of AT&T's overall FMC strategy have so far been unanswered.

In March 2006, AT&T -- then Cingular -- said that it would leapfrog UMA deployments and instead install an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). The operator had initially undertaken several trials of UMA-based systems in 2005. Nothing, however, apparently came of those at the time. In January 2007, the carrier said that it had deployed IMS and was working on FMC but gave no more information. (See Cingular: The Call of the WiFi.)

Since then the operator has provided no firm dates for any kind of FMC launch. In the meantime, its main GSM rival, T-Mobile US Inc. , has introduced the first FMC service in the U.S. -- Hotspot@Home -- using unlicensed mobile access technology.

AT&T's FMC strategy may become clearer as more details on its home base-station requirements emerge, although, so far, analysts don't have a lot to say on exactly what AT&T desires from a femtocell. (See Is AT&T Putting Out Femto Feelers?)

What they're looking for isn't really "ground-breaking" and is "fairly basic," according to Allied Business Intelligence Inc. (ABI) analyst Stuart Carlaw of AT&T's rumored femtocell RFP. "It's really about coverage and call plans… They're not looking to do a huge amount of multimedia."— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung