WIRELESS WONDER

It's unlikely there will be widespread rejoicing at this week's Western Show, the cable industry's tech-heavy gathering in Anaheim, where telecom's somber mood is sure to prevail. But there will no doubt be considerable relief that a threat to cable's domination of high-speed data has been obviated.

True to video form, cable is raising rates for high-speed data services — despite a weak economy, a frequently weak product and a plethora of provider woes. It can do this because it's generally the only game in town. Now that the CLECs are all but gone, DSL is more of a challenge for the subscribers who want to sign up than it is for cable operators. And fixed broadband wireless is again smoldering on the back burner, the victim of a slow economy and a generation of technology that was doomed from the start.

Sprint, though not the only villain, must accept the lion's share of the blame for once again pushing a potentially viable technology contender into an abyss. Sprint spearheaded the MMDS move from the backwater into the mainstream with two-way high-speed data delivery. Unfortunately, the carrier moved into the market with first-generation technology rife with the kinds of bugaboos that made it unwieldy and unprofitable to deploy.

First-gen gear could not deliver quality signals reliably without pristine line-of-sight paths between large towers and unsightly rooftop antennas. Sprint compounded its deployment error by continuing rollout even though it was clear that costs were too high and returns too low to profit. That effectively trapped the vendor base into developing and building 1G products and putting creation of potentially more viable 2G products on hold.

Sprint, now in a deployment moratorium, is finally focused on 2G. At the same time, it has stranded an influential group of early adopter subscribers — the type who could make or break a technology such as fixed wireless — who are unlikely to give fixed broadband wireless a second chance if it returns in an improved package 18 months from now.

Sprint has compounded matters by giving its existing subscribers less-than-stellar customer service. As one of those stranded subs recently explained, “Sprint won't release me from my contract, even though the service is spotty and they're no longer committed to it. I would have to pay upward of $300 to buy myself out of my contract, and I would have to climb onto the roof to take down the tower.”

That's not the word-of-mouth the fixed broadband wireless industry needs to hear, but it's music to the ears of cable's high-speed supporters, whose path to dominance is clear — clearer, even, than the line of sight first-gen broadband wireless products need to deliver service.