A new hope

With the competition of two major U.S. wireless trade shows every year, Supercomm has always longed to be anotable wireless venue but never quite accomplished its mission. Most of the large, multitechnology vendors come to Supercomm, but few of them tote their cellular and PCS gear along. The show's wireless focus usually ends up being limited to areas such as operations support system software, wireless data applications and enhanced services platforms.

But the recent emergence of broadband wireless as a big-ticket technology item could change all that. Suddenly, the Supercomm scene is attracting the attention of a group of new and existing vendors that are aggressively pursuing broadband wireless-albeit to an entirely different class of carriers. The technology field has already partially usurped the presence of mobile wireless at the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association's show earlier this year, and the increasing prevalence of broadband wireless appears to be making this year's Supercomm a turning point in the show's wireless evolution.

The broadband force The lineup of vendors planning to address broadband wireless at Supercomm features many familiar exhibitor names, as well as some new additions.

Among the established vendors that will have their broadband wireless wares on display are Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks, both of which have established themselves as equipment leaders in this nascent industry sector. Vendors such as Cicso Systems and Newbridge Networks also are making forays into broadband wireless, but their contributions come more often in the form of data switching gear.

Lucent will showcase its newly named OnDemand Wireless Access family of systems, which is a result of the vendor's OEM agreement with Netro. Meanwhile, Nortel will have its Reunion point-to-multipoint systems on display.

In addition, Alcatel plans to showcase its 9900-ww, a broadband wireless access solution geared for the local multipoint distribution service (LMDS) spectrum. Like other broadband wireless suppliers, the company is hoping its system approach will kick-start the LMDS license holders to develop their strategies for service delivery.

"Some companies are still trying to figure out what they're going to do with the spectrum," said Dave Kimzey, vice president and general manager for radio products at Alcatel. "They're looking for ideas from the vendors."

Harris will feature details on its recently announced foray into broadband wireless at the show. The vendor will introduce the first of its products, which will formally be unveiled at the Telecom 99 show in Geneva later this year.

Harris also plans to serve as a systems integrator, leveraging its Millimeter Wave Design Center and several other Harris divisions to provide solutions from 2.5 to 38 GHz. Vendors such as Digital Microwave, Adaptive Broadband (formerly California Microwave), Hughes Network Systems and P-Com will also be exhibiting their broadband wireless gear at Supercomm '99.

Forging new ground Some of the broadband-focused wireless equipment vendors coming to Supercomm '99 are new themselves and are preparing to launch early versions of their systems. Some are taking entirely new approaches to the equipment and service delivery.

Ensemble Communications, for example, will showcase its time division duplexed (TDD) system. The company is gearing its point-to-multipoint solution to small and medium-sized businesses that have bandwidth requirements that are more than technologies, such as digital subscriber line (DSL) technology can provide, but less than fiber.

"Point-to-multipoint is all about the ability to burst," said Carlton O'Neal, vice president of marketing and sales at Ensemble. "This is the sweet spot for the average data rates to a building."

Like Ensemble, Wavtrace geared its development efforts toward TDD because the format is suitable for data networking and is applicable to the LMDS B band.

"TDD started out as a way for 38 GHz guys to use their spectrum," said Steven Warwick, vice president of product management at Wavtrace. "When the B band thing showed up, there was no one out there that had a good answer for it. It wasn't until Nextlink bought the spectrum and started talking about it for other applications that the B band started to have this perceived value.

Wavtrace's first releases won't be asymmetrical but rather 50% uplink and 50% downlink. Future versions of the system will be adaptive.

"That really doesn't preclude the use of the system for voice and data," said Warwick. "In the early days these systems will be fixed."

To the point Several newcomers to broadband wireless are focusing their development efforts on point-to-point systems, which certainly have a significant place within the overall network scheme.

Triton Network Systems will display its Invisible Fiber products, geared for the 38 GHz and LMDS spectrum bands. The system can handle as much as 155 Mb/s of throughput and is designed to be deployed in what Triton calls a "consecutive point" architecture that mimics traditional network ring formats.

Spike Technologies, meanwhile, is focusing its development efforts at the 1 to 10 GHz bands for both North American and international markets. In the United States, that range encompasses the multichannel multipoint distribution service band, which has taken the spotlight of late due to renewed interest from carriers such as Sprint and MCI WorldCom.

"We came up with an antenna that allows us to multiply the capacity of the spectrum," said Jeff Keith, director of marketing at Spike. The antenna divides spectrum into 22 sectors, he said. "With four 6 MHz channels, we're able to put out an aggregated throughput of 220 Mb/s across our coverage area."

Israel-based startup Witcom Wireless will feature its line of millimeter wave radios intended for backhaul and access applications.

Likewise, Wavespan will feature its line of point-to-point gear, including the recently introduced Stratum 20. The product, which can provide 20 Mb/s full-duplex transport of Internet protocol (IP) traffic and features two time division multiplexing interfaces for carrying legacy applications like PBX traffic, takes the middle spot in Wavespan's product lineup. Its 5800 is a 10 Mb/s system, and its Stratum 100 offers 100 Mb/s. All three are designed for both last-mile access and backhaul, and are tuned for the unlicensed national information infrastructure band, said Mike Kazban, Wavespan's vice president of marketing.

"We're targeting full-service carriers that have a need to service small, medium and large business," Kazban said.

Wireless Inc. takes a somewhat different tack to broadband wireless. At Supercomm, the company will be showcasing its StarPort service that was introduced at the CTIA convention in March. StarPort offers Internet service providers and other competitive carriers what Wireless Inc. calls "wireless DSL" connectivity for business customers (Figure 1).

This year, however, Wireless Inc. plans to announce that the company itself will become a service provider in certain regions, offering access service based on the technology it developed.

Other up-and-coming broadband wireless vendors showcasing products include Netro, Giganet and Bosch Telecom.

The other wireless fleet All of that said, Supercomm '99 is still trying to maintain its identity as an everything-and-anything technology event. That means that network technologies for wireless mobility-cable division multiple access, time division multiple access and GSM-are still on Supercomm's radar screen, as are wireless local loop, wireless data, interconnect/backhaul and satellite technologies.

Part of Supercomm's wireless focus is its continuance of the show's accompanying seminar sessions. This year a panel of service providers and technology developers has been formed to address the broad topic of wireless and satellite technologies and applications. Representatives from MCI WorldCom, Tegic Communications, Intasys Management Systems and Spacenet Services will gather to share their perspectives on topics as varied as wireless billing and subscriber management, short messaging services and satellite-based services.

Several vendors are planning to include wireless-related software platforms as part of their larger Supercomm presence. Glenayre Electronics, for example, will feature its MVP enhanced services platform, which is targeted at cellular and PCS operators as well as other carriers. Lucent plans to feature some new wireless data solutions at the show, and Ericsson, General Magic, Microsoft, Comverse Technology Inc. and Clear Communications plan to feature wireless-related applications. Meanwhile, OSS developers such as Architel Systems Corp. and Telecommunications Technologies Inc. will be showing off operations solutions geared toward wireless carriers.

Supercomm may never fully realize the multitechnology aspirations it has labored to achieve, but ongoing developments in wireless are clearly beginning to bolster the show's long-sought wireless identity.