Posted: 06/1999
Wireless Cable
MCI, Sprint Invest, Last-Mile Alternatives Proliferate
By Peter Lambert and Charlotte Wolter
Fiber optic network construction isn't cheap.
That's why, according to many vendors, competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) have penetrated no more than 5 percent of North American business customer buildings in the past six years.
No wonder manufacturers of two-way, broadband, over-the-air transmission systems are hustling to persuade CLECs, interexchange carriers (IXCs) and Internet service providers (ISPs) to adopt wireless alternatives to fiber. The first half of 1999 has seen a flurry of startup vendors debuting in this space, as well as some acquisitions of wireless carriers by competitive carriers, most notably MCI WorldCom Inc.'s proposed acquisition of CAI Wireless Inc., Albany, N.Y., and Sprint Corp.'s acquisitions of People's Choice TV Inc. (PCTV), Stamford, Conn., and American Telecasting Inc., Colorado Springs, Colo.
In general, last-mile voice, data and integrated access carriers now can consider four technological options: high-frequency local multipoint distribution service (LMDS) (the licenses of which are dominated by IXCs), low-frequency multichannel multipoint distribution service (MMDS), unlicensed frequency technologies and/or infrared transmission.
However, variations on each option remain as numerous as their proponents, each of which claims breakthroughs in relatively new wireless broadband sciences.
One proponent of one such breakthrough, time-division duplexing (TDD), is Ensemble Communications Inc., San Diego. TDD allocates time slots to each user transmission in both directions.
Designed for LMDS frequencies (an equipment market that The Strategis Group, Washington, projects will reach $8 billion in 10 years), Ensemble's Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) system claims to enable CLECs to dedicate up to 30- megabits-per-second (mbps) capacity per building location.
Through implementation of what Ensemble calls adaptive TDD (ATDD), the system also claims to deliver bandwidth that is dynamically shared and statistically multiplexed in both directions over the air, across circuit-switched, Internet protocol (IP)-routed or frame relay or asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switched traffic.
Graph: Wireless Local Network Extension
Where more traditional time-division multiple access (TDMA) schemes used in narrowband wireless systems allow multiple users to share the same bandwidth via time slots, Ensemble's ATDD system adds the dimension of on-demand bandwidth in both directions (duplex) for each user. Additionally, the base station contains quality-of-service (QoS) mechanisms to police the contracted bandwidth allocation per customer.
Initially, the point-to-multipoint system is designed to occupy 25-megahertz (mHz) blocks in both the A-band and B-band LMDS frequencies. Access ports scale to eight T1s (or eight 1.5mbps) links, while network trunk links range from DS-3 (45mbps) to OC-3 (155mbps). The company plans beta trials in the third quarter and product delivery by year's end. ADC Telecommunications Inc., Minnetonka, Minn., has agreed to become the first access original equipment maker (OEM) to integrate Ensemble's system into its wireless products.
"While most digital subscriber line (DSL) deployments by CLECs depend on incumbent infrastructure, wireless CLECs have an opportunity for true bypass and so higher margins," says Ensemble CEO Rami Hader. "And unlike fiber construction, the wireless CLEC can build out base stations only as customers sign on."
Like ADC, Lucent Technologies Inc., Murray Hill, N.J., is now an OEM for another broadband, point-to-multipoint and point-to-point wireless transmission equipment provider, Netro Corp., San Jose, Calif. Lucent's OnDemand wireless broadband system (which incorporates Netro AirStar and multiservice data access and switching technologies from Alameda, Calif.-based Ascend Communications Inc.) was selected in April by Advanced Radio Telecom Corp. (ART), Bellevue, Wash., which is planning to build a wireless broadband network in Oslo, Norway, this year.
Adding synchronous optical network (SONET) transport to the broadband LMDS space is Triton Network Systems Inc., Orlando, Fla. According to Triton President and CEO Brian Andrew, traditional SONET construction costs an average of $150,000 per mile, while Triton's Invisible Fiber system, with standard SONET OC-3 and fast Ethernet (100mbps) interfaces, costs an average of $15,000 per mile. By year's end, Triton plans also to introduce OC-12 (622mbps) products.
Triton's point-to-point "Consecutive Point" architecture is designed to extend and complement fiber networks by creating "a SONET loop with radio," Andrew says. "It has to have as good a bit-error rate and 99.99 percent availability as the fiber network to which it's attached, or it looks like a fiber cut, and the [SONET] add/drop multiplexer will turn off the link." The system is in trial in Burbank, Calif.-based The Walt Disney Co.'s Walt Disney World resort, Orlando, Fla.
As another low-cost alternative to broadband fiber optic cable, Infrared Communications Systems Inc., Edmonds, Wash., added in April the 155mbps SkyNet 800 to its family of SkyNet systems, which include a 100mbps fiber-distributed data interface (FDDI, which has a reach of 2.46 miles), 100mbps fast Ethernet (also 2.46 miles) and 1.5mbps (3.69 miles) systems for voice, data and video transport.
Another startup, Rooftop Communi-cations Corp., Mountain View, Calif., is combining radio stations with standard IP routers to extend routed networks without the need to use unbundled local loops or to partner with resellers of wholesale DSL or even wireless loops.
Rooftop's Internet Radio hardware and Internet Radio Operating System (IROS) software are designed to operate as a multipoint network, and as a multirouter-hop network, just as any wired router-based network does. The key advantage to this architecture, says Rooftop President Dave Beyer, is that each radio need be only in the line of site of another radio/router "peer" in the network to gain access to the whole network.
"The reliance on the Internet, and the need for high-speed access, particularly among small and medium businesses who can't an afford expensive local loop, makes the time right to let ISPs roll out their own last-mile, without dependence on local carriers," Beyer says. "This redirects 100 percent of revenues to the ISP."
Beyer also emphasizes that the Internet Radio network can be built incrementally in response to demand. Each new Internet Radio introduced to the network "learns what other radios are out there, what their links are, their link qualities, speeds and routing tables, all automatically," he says. "It's a natural extension of the Internet, vs. multipoint wireless systems which are last hop, in terms of routing, rather than extend and extend."
Claiming 128kbps to 1.5mbps speeds in the 2.4gHz spectrum, Rooftop's Spirit 2000 radio (targeted at a one- to six-mile range) is volume priced at $1,995, while the Spirit 4000-LR (targeted at the 30-mile range) is volume priced at $4,995.
Whatever the broadband, wireless flavor, the new kids on the block want, as Triton's Andrew puts it, "to eliminate the two remaining problems you face with fiber: cost and time to market."
MMDS has emerged in recent weeks as an attractive enough alternative to the onerous regional Bell operating company (RBOC) last mile to get MCI WorldCom and Sprint to open their checkbooks and buy out the three leading license holders. MCI WorldCom offered $24 per share for CAI Wireless' 17 million shares outstanding, then upped it to $28 for a transaction totaling $476 million. Sprint offered $8 a share for 12.9 million outstanding common shares of PCTV for a total of $103 million, and had earlier agreed to acquire PCTV's convertible cumulative pay-in-kind preferred stock at a cost of $23.3 million. No details were available about the offer for American Telecasting. CAI and PCTV already offer Internet services over MMDS.
"If you are an MCI and, less so, Sprint, when you look at what AT&T is doing with Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) it has to scare the pants off you, because the issue is, what is your local access strategy?," says Robert Rosenberg, president, Insight Research Corp., Parsippany, N.J. "Fixed broadband wireless is clearly a major play for MCI if they want to stay in the consumer market."
Sprint also will continue to offer Integrated On-Demand Network (ION) via DSL in most areas. MMDS, Rosenberg says, "is just one more arrow in the quiver. It is not a silver bullet."
