Bring 'em on: New broadband wireless vendors sound battle cries

New vendor players emerged on the broadband wireless circuit last week, promising to join what is shaping up to be a world of tremendous opportunity for equipment developers. The question yet unanswered is whether the newcomers will be able to cut it in a region already dominated by the biggest of the big.

Wavtrace, a newcomer to the Wireless '99 show, made its broadband wireless coming out with a promise to have early versions of its systems ready within months.

Wavtrace unveiled its point-to-multipoint system, the PTM 1000, during the show. The platform leverages a time division duplexed (TDD) technology platform that is unique in its channel efficiency and spectral agility, necessary characteristics for delivering data services, said Bob Foster, chief technology officer for Wavtrace.

"When you consider Internet traffic and its bursty nature, with TDD there's an advantage because you can oversubscribe the bandwidth in either direction," Foster said.

Ray Nettleton, chief technology officer of international broadband wireless operator Formus Communications, was on hand at Wavtrace's event to provide carrier validation of the effort. TDD is optimized for markets where spectrum is available in multiple ranges, he said.

"Wavtrace has a product that can rescue the regulators from their own misunderstanding," Nettleton said.

The system is in beta test now and will be generally available in a month or two, Foster said. Subsequent releases will allow for dynamic wavelength allocation.

Meanwhile, Netro also was working to establish a broadband wireless presence at the show, highlighting plans for its asynchronous transfer mode-based AirStar point-to-multipoint product. The vendor believes the system's software control capabilities will help operators make more efficient use of available spectrum. "Over the air I send it in a true ATM format, so I am allocating bandwidth dynamically to send data only when there's data to send," said Cynthia Hillery, vice president of marketing at Netro.

One industry analyst said these newcomers lack one important component that could make it difficult for them to compete against the likes of Nortel Networks and Lucent Technologies.

"It's a big market and it's expected to grow fast so there should be room, but they'll be at a disadvantage because the carriers are looking for system integration," said Andy Fuertes, senior analyst at Allied Business Intelligence. Still, the products of smaller broadband wireless system developers could be purchased by the bigger vendors to fill holes in their own product lines, or the smaller companies could get acquired, he said.