The year of the radio: Conference highlights broadband wireless momentum

Industry consensus seems to be that 2000 is the year broadband wireless technology will come into its own, marked by multimillion-dollar equipment contracts, next generation equipment releases and large-scale network deployments. Judging from the activity at last week's Broadband Wireless World Forum in San Francisco, that prediction is right on the money.

Besides new product introductions and a collection of equipment vendors pursuing service provider customers roaming the conference's exhibition hall, the event was marked by informed discussions about different radio architectures merits, most notably, the importance of the more established point-to-point format as point-to-multipoint continues to mature.

"We're not technology bigots - we care about providing the best service to our customers at the best economics to us," said Buddy Pickle, president and chief operating officer of Teligent. "I'm a big fan of point-to-point today because the prices are plummeting."

Still, point-to-multipoint vendors are positioning themselves to get a piece of the action from the biggest of the local multipoint distribution service (LMDS) players, including Nextlink Communications (see story page 9). Ensemble Communications, for example, sealed a deal with Digital Microwave Corp. - a long-time point-to-point system vendor - under which DMC will buy and resell $5 million worth of Ensemble's Fiberless point-to-multipoint system. The companies expect to have an ongoing relationship.

"Selling our product to them and having them resell it provides us with a very strong channel," said Carlton O'Neal, vice president of marketing for Ensemble. "It's a blue-chip company with blue-chip customers."

"We looked at all the potential players, but we didn't really see anything that was the right thing for us or that technologically impressed us as much as Ensemble," said Shaun McFall, vice president of product marketing for DMC.

Meanwhile, Wavtrace used last week's conference to showcase PTM 2000, the next generation of its point-to-multipoint system for LMDS spectrum. The system has a payload transport capacity of 3.6 Gb/s and can support 20 carrier channels at a burst rate of 180 Mb/s per carrier.

"The carriers said they wanted the cheapest system possible that would scale to 1000-plus remotes and multiple gigabits of capacity," said Tom van Overbeek, president and CEO of Wavtrace.

Now that it's clear that several architectures will fit in different network situations, vendors are getting a better sense of the demands they must meet. Alcatel, which recently announced its first U.S. LMDS trial with Prime Companies in Pennsylvania, is finding that operators' expectations go beyond radios to include engineering services, testing, installation and financing.

"It's not enough to be a provider of equipment," said John Lilly, senior director of fixed wireless marketing, strategic planning and business development for Alcatel.

Netro also has confidence in the point-to-multipoint architecture, but it feels that vendors have their work cut out for them. "We'll see longevity for point-to-multipoint," said Cynthia Hillery, vice president of marketing for Netro. "But we'll see more demand from our customers for more value-adds."

Netro's first product handles voice, IP and dynamic bandwidth control. Its second iteration supports frame relay and ISDN voice. Future products will handle virtual private networks, enhanced IP services and will support all types of backhaul such as cable, DSL and point-to-point radios, she said.

The biggest challenge facing vendors, though, may be ramping up on the production side. Many companies such as Netro are small, and their current trials could turn into big contracts. These smaller companies must prove to potential customers that they can handle large orders, Hillery said.

The broadband wireless business explosion isn't likely to be limited to the U.S., and vendors pursuing global opportunities are finding additional time pressures. As international markets deregulate and spectrum decisions are made, many governments are imposing timelines under which spectrum owners must build or risk losing their spectrum, said John Skoro, director of product marketing for broadband wireless access at Nortel Networks.