Wedging into the wireless local loop, Start-up gives its solution a data spin

The burgeoning wireless local loop market, like many other niche technology areas, is fast becoming populated with a mix of large, well-established equipment vendors and entrepreneurial hopefuls. Aware of that, a start-up called AdiCom Wireless has equipped its own wireless local loop system with proprietary features in an attempt to lure the attention of carriers away from the pack.

AdiCom believes its secret weapon is data. Not just average-speed data access, but data access at speeds of up to 128 kb/s. With that capability, AdiCom is hoping to push the allure of the wireless local loop into the data-fevered U.S. market.

"Our plan is to offer higher data rates on wireless local loop," said Adel Ghanem, founder, president and chief executive officer of AdiCom. "People are frustrated getting on the Internet on a 9.6 or a 14.4 [kb/s modem], and ISDN costs a lot and takes a long time to provision."

The company's means of achieving those higher rates are proprietary and currently in the patent process, but they are based on the spread spectrum principles of code division multiple access (CDMA) technology that allow frequency sharing and translate to higher capacity transmission.

"For higher data rates, it is most advantageous to use CDMA, as opposed to TDMA, where you have to aggregate channels," said Ghanem. "I firmly believe [CDMA] offers a lot of advantages for the local loop."

Wireless local loop systems have traditionally been viewed as fast and cost-effective methods of putting up service in areas where teledensity is low, particularly developing countries. But taking the systems' capabilities one step further-in this case, into the data realm-could help improve their penetration in the U.S. as well, said one analyst.

"In the U.S., it could be used either by businesses or residents for bypass," said John Ledahl, director of wireless programs at Dataquest. "The higher data rate capability enhances its marketability."

And while the U.S. market is indeed at the top of AdiCom's list, the company's system is also being groomed for international assignment. There, its chief differential could prove to be cost, Ledahl said.

"There's also a market for this in developing countries, and this sounds like a more cost-effective way of doing it," he said. "AdiCom has come up with something that's primarily a fixed wireless solution that's a lot cheaper than the competition."

Ghanem is realistic about his company's prospects here. AdiCom is in discussions with service providers in Asia and South America that are considering field trials beginning in early 1997, but Ghanem hopes the U.S. market will be the system's first proving ground.

"The market here is slowly developing. That's why we shifted our focus early on to the Far East and South America," he said. "But unlike most other applications that focus only on voice, we are a data product, so there is quite a bit of interest here in the U.S."

MTA-EMCI, a telecommunications consultancy based in Washington, D.C., recently completed a study on the wireless local loop market both in the U.S. and overseas and concluded that there is room for entrepreneurial competition.

"The start-up companies do have a reasonable chance at success," said Peter Nighswander, senior consultant at MTA-EMCI. "If they can go in and provide the technology quickly and efficiently, they can certainly benefit. They may have a niche in certain markets. I think the smaller players will fare better in smaller, lower-density markets."

However, to set themselves apart from the efforts of larger infrastructure manufacturers that have the benefit of name recognition and better financing capabilities, smaller players should target a specific segment of the market rather than trying to be everything to everyone, Nighswander said.

But the bigger entities in the wireless local loop market may not necessarily agree. Lucent Technologies, for one, is generally leery of wireless solutions that don't heed existing standardization practices and aren't as open to multivendor opportunities.

"From our perspective, standards are very important. Complying with existing standards bodies like IS-95 is key to anyone's success," said Robert Sellinger, director of personal communications systems at Lucent. "We've heard loud and clear that openness in standards is here to stay. No carrier is going to be willing to become entrapped by anything proprietary."

AdiCom's take on CDMA is indeed proprietary and doesn't adhere to

IS-95 standards, but it is still able to interface with other network equipment.

"They're using an advanced CDMA-not the IS-95 turn," said Ledahl. "But they have a way of making it open for service providers to use."

"My approach is to go with standard interfaces to the switch," said Ghanem. AdiCom manufactures the base station and customer premises portions of the system and is in talks with several switch manufacturers about alliances. "Our approach is that of partnerships, as opposed to trying to be exclusive with everybody."