In a move to extend broadband access to more customers, BellSouth on Wednesday announced the expansion of BellSouth Wireless Broadband Service into five new markets in its service territory.
The company will deploy the service in the third quarter of 2006 to select parts of Melbourne, Fla.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Greenville, Miss.; Charleston, S.C.; and Albany, Ga.
BellSouth's wireless broadband service offers residential and business customers high-speed Internet access, with downstream speeds up to 1.5mbps and no phone line required, the company said. The system transmits signals between local radio towers and a small non-line-of-sight desktop subscriber modem, and utilizes BellSouth licensed WCS 2.3GHz spectrum. Customers have the option to use the service at a discount as backup access to the Internet in the event of a wireline network outage, and can choose to bundle a Wi-Fi service into their wireless broadband service, the company said.
"With BellSouth Wireless Broadband Service, we can reach even more of our customers with high-speed Internet access," said Randy Roberts, vice president of wireless and CPE management at BellSouth. "One of our primary focuses in these latest deployments has been on our rural customers, some whose only opportunity to experience high-speed Internet is with our wireless broadband service."
While the broadband wireless access footprint is a proprietary one for now, BellSouth announced yesterday it will trial Alcatel’s Evolium 802.16e WiMAX solution in the BellSouth lab, beginning next quarter.
BellSouth Corp. www.bellsouth.com
