Cisco takes stab at MMDS market

Cisco Systems has teamed with 10 companies to push a broadband wireless standard in a move that some say is Cisco's attempt to stall the market while it plays catch-up.

Cisco wants to standardize its vector orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (VOFDM) technology, which it acquired with Clarity Wireless last year.

"VOFDM is a technology designed to exploit over-the-air issues such as multipath," said Steve Smith, director of broadband wireless marketing for Cisco. The technology combines frequency diversity, which exploits fade in the path, and spatial diversity, which combines multiple antennas at the receive site for a stronger signal. "When you put it together, it's really robust," Smith said.

VOFDM allows operators to lower the height of antennas and reach customers that may be unreachable with other technologies due to line-of-sight issues. "It should help lower the cost of deploying and increase the number of subscribers," Smith said.

"From a technology standpoint, they're really doing something very different," said Bob Egan, research director for the GartnerGroup. "Cisco believes it has a clear and effective way to befriend multipath and add some significant capacity, while also providing some flexibility to carriers by answering some of the constraints about line of sight."

VOFDM is most suitable in lower frequencies, so Cisco initially will target multichannel multipoint distribution service (MMDS) license holders and later unlicensed-national information infrastructure (U-NII) spectrum users.

The only catch so far with the technology is that it's too expensive compared with other available products and not yet ready for the market, some analysts say. At the root of Cisco's standardization play is likely an attempt to solve those shortcomings in time to compete for Sprint's MMDS business. "This is Cisco trying to sell more gear," said Mark Zohar, senior analyst for Forrester Research.

During the past year, Sprint has agreed to purchase five MMDS license holders as a method for delivering broadband Internet access. Sprint has taken a two-phased approach to deploying service and already has sent out a request for proposal (RFP) for the first phase. Cisco didn't make that cut, according to a source close to the matter. Cisco's recent move to standardize its technology may be aimed at lowering the price of its product and possibly even slowing the progress of competitors in an attempt to win Sprint's second-phase business. The phase two RFP is expected in November.

Cisco said it would have initial products available by the end of the year - a prediction several analysts doubt is possible. "I find that very hard to believe," said Rich Valera, vice president at Needham & Co. Most likely, Cisco will have a point-to-point product available by the end of the year but not a point-to-multipoint solution, he said.

Notably absent from the Cisco partnership are MMDS players Adaptive Broadband and ADC Telecommunications.

"We always advocate standards," said Peter Jew, director of marketing in ADC's broadband wireless group. ADC has experience using a technology similar to VOFDM but on the cable modem side and believes the technology is not ready for commercial use yet. "It goes back to the market pressure we're seeing from customers today. They spent a fortune buying up licenses - they're not going to wait a couple of years until something real is out there," he said.

VOFDM - with the backing of heavy hitters such as Cisco, Motorola, Texas Instruments and Samsung - undoubtedly will present a strong option but possibly not the only one. "Though VOFDM could provide formidable long-term competition in the broadband wireless market, we believe it will co-exist as a more expensive complement to [technology such as Adaptive Broadband's] for applications where line-of-sight is not available," Valera said in a report.