Wait 'til next year

Feb 26, 2001 12:00 PM, Jim Barthold

Like a Chicago Cubs fan, the fixed broadband wireless industry seems stuck in a cycle of waiting for next year.

Citing an eroding economy and technology that's not quite ready for prime time, fixed broadband wireless executives last week offered up the first signs of U.S. surrender in 2001 during the fourth annual Broadband Wireless World Forum in San Francisco. International opportunities, as always, look like better prospects to keep the industry afloat this year, executives said.

That there is a continuing interest in the fixed broadband space was evidenced by a record conference attendance of more than 3400, which more than doubled the previous high mark. Those attendees, though, heard some bleak news about the industry—particularly in North America, where broadband wireless business is so shaky that first-day keynoter George Hendry, Alcatel's business development vice president, had to reassure his audience, “No, we're not dying, we're not sick” and that better things are coming “late this year, early next year.”

“Vendors,” he continued, “have to start performing.”

Callahan Associates founder Richard Callahan agreed that it would be a “very difficult 2000 to 2001. It's obviously going to be harder than we thought.” He, too, laid part of the blame on vendors, noting, “as a general proposition, they've done a horseshit job.”

The vendors didn't rise up to object.

“This industry is a little more in its infancy than a lot of us would like to think,” conceded Kwame Boakye, Harris Corp.'s technology vice president, while Dave Twyver, president and CEO of Ensemble Communications, agreed that “so far in North America, vendors have not cracked the code” to make it economical to deploy mass amounts of wireless equipment.

“You just need a little more patience,” Twyver advised.

The slumping economy may encourage patience by limiting funds available to do anything in 2001, said Teligent's chairman and CEO Alex Mandl.

“Reality suggests that this will not turn around in a few weeks or a few months. It probably hasn't bottomed out,” he said.

That economic delay could give the industry time to get free of the rancor that is impeding its technology standards efforts. An acrimonious panel session contrasting non-line-of-sight delivery approaches, most of which favor some variation of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transport, showed how deep the rift among various industry players is.

“We need standards,” said Hatim Zaghloul, chairman and CEO of Wi-LAN and leader of the OFDM Forum. “Let's join hands and push the standards process further.”

Ender Ayanoglu, chairman of the competing Broadband Wireless Internet Forum suggested “it's the market that's going to make the decision.”

At the same time, Iospan Wireless added a MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) twist to the OFDM equation. However, Ralph Muse, president and CEO of NextNet Wireless, scoffed at the short-term prospects for MIMO. “[It] might be wonderful, but it's not here yet,” he said.

On the other hand, Muse said, his company has found success with a proprietary technology that it's testing in Minnesota. The NextNet system is “quite simple, quite robust and it works” by placing all the receive/transmit electronics in a desktop unit.

NextNet, he promised, has customers lined up checking it out.

“There's one service provider that has more people looking at my technology than I have in my company,” Muse bragged, before adding, tellingly, “[but] they're not buying now.”

That wasn't the case for Wharton Rivers, CEO of Advanced Radio Telecom, who offered the upbeat news that his company had won an $11 million deal with international player Cable & Wireless in the U.S. market.

“The time has come for us to stop making promises about our industry and the technology and start delivering,” he warned. “We're no longer ahead of our time. Now is the time to deliver on the promise of our industry.”

Cable & Wireless will use ART's broadband wireless services to extend the reach of its wireline networks. Rivers said in a later interview that this is evidence that fixed wireless service providers are beginning to deliver on the technology's promise in competitive environments where wireline alternatives are costly and difficult to obtain.

“In the U.S., Cable & Wireless didn't have much reach into access, so it depended on the local access provider,” Rivers said. “Part of our value proposition is to demonstrate that the rapidity of our provisioning is truly superior to the providers they're now using.”

That news contributed to the upbeat message he delivered to a somewhat downbeat crowd.

“I'm an evangelist for this industry to start delivering on the promise,” he said. “We need to provide the businesses of today a reality check [because] there may not be a tomorrow.”

Or a next year.