MMDS success >BY SHIRA McCARTHY, Associate Editor-News

Amid the maelstrom surrounding wireless cable's future, a Santa Rosa, Calif.-based carrier has announced the availability of the country's first Internet access service over a digital wireless cable system.

The Innovation Group/Metro.Net is offering Internet access at speeds up to 10 Mb/s to business customers in Las Vegas. Positioned as an alternative to ISDN or a T-1 line, the service is priced at an average of $250 a month, said Andrew Nester, president and chief executive officer of The Innovation Group/Metro.Net.

The service uses one-way cable modems from Hybrid Networks and lets the customer choose an ISDN, T-1 or POTS line back to the headend, depending on the amount of data that needs to be uploaded.

The carrier is testing a campus intranet service at the University of California-Berkeley, but it won't enter the residential market until modem costs drop further, Nester said.

Digital wireless cable has been hit hard over the last few weeks, most recently when shareholders filed a lawsuit against CAI Wireless alleging that the company misrepresented the potential of digital wireless cable.

Digital cable works just fine, Nester said. CAI simply tooted its horn too soon. "CAI said things before they should have," he said. "We took delivery of equipment in January and did some trial testing, but we kept quiet until now because we wanted to make sure it would work.