AT&T announced customer trials starting early 2006 of a managed, end-to-end, hosted RFID service. AT&T also joined EPCglobal US, an affiliate of EPCglobal, serving subscribers in the United States to help foster the adoption of the EPCglobal Network and related technology. The EPCglobal Network combines RFID technology, existing communications network infrastructure, and the Electronic Product Code (EPC) to enable accurate, cost-efficient visibility of information in the supply chain. During the 90-day RFID service trials, AT&T will design, deploy and manage integrated, end-to-end RFID solutions, which extend from AT&T’s IP network and Internet Data Centers into customer-premises infrastructure, including RFID readers, edge devices and software, local area networks, firewalls and routers. Although AT&T customers have been using the company’s services to piece together their own custom-built RFID solutions for some time, the new AT&T service integrates its services—network integration and consulting, IP transport, hosting, storage, managed applications and security—into a single managed service specifically for RFID.
