ULTRA-HIGH FREQUENCY RADIO GETS GOVERNMENT BACKING

A new company claims to have “disruptive technology” that will revolutionize the wireless local loop, deliver ubiquitous broadband connectivity and shatter the “first-mile” network bottleneck. Sound familiar?

Yes it does. But Loea — a subsidiary of defense contractor Trex Enterprises that wants to use the 70 to 80 GHz spectrum bands to beam pencil-thin radio frequency signals between line-of-sight targets — has some fortuitous aspects working in its favor.

Among them: Trex's inside track with government regulators; lobbying support from the Wireless Communications Association International; sharpened demand for redundant networks following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington; and the virgin spectrum the company wants to use.

“These guys are very creative and they've been very well sponsored by federal and state officials,” said Richard Lukaj, president of Babcock Capital Partners and a long-time wireless watcher.

Loea is testing its experimental technology with a 2.7 mile full-duplex gigabit link between the University of Hawaii's Marine Biology Center and Windward Community College. The FCC is studying how to slice off a piece of that spectrum, which is now used by the government, for commercial applications.

Loea CEO Lou Slaughter has plenty of ideas for the spectrum, including ubiquitous “first-mile” links for voice over IP, streaming HDTV over IP, cheap fiber replacement and widespread Wi-Fi deployment.

“It's all the benefits and none of the negatives of free space optics,” Slaughter said.

Loea's most serious impediment is rain. However, rainfall statistics indicate the company can provide five 9s reliability up to a mile in most of the country.

The Lower Manhattan Telecom Users Group group is testing Loea as a fiber optic safety net, said John Gilbert, the group's chairman.

“We're focusing on the rooftops of our buildings and creating a series of wireless hubs that could either support microwave or free-space optics so companies could have a third layer of redundancy that never touched the street,” he said.

Initially, Loea delivers 1.25 Gb/s links, but that will expand to 2.5 Gb/s by the middle of next year and 10 Gb/s within two years, Slaughter said.

“You can take an optical cable from one of our links into a simple switch, and from that you can have 24 10-by-100 ports going straight to computers,” he said, noting that the application would suit carriers that want to extend a gigabit Ethernet LAN service.