Aperto places products into the field--at home and abroad

Broadband fixed-wireless vendor Aperto Networks has started product trials in U.S., European and Asian markets, hitting “milestones” by “having our products in the hands of early users,” according to Alan Menezes, marketing vice president.

“We now have products into the field,” Menezes said. “As far as we’re concerned, things are alive and kicking and pretty much thriving.”

This seems to contradict much of the fixed-wireless market, which has been in a year-long economic slump, especially in the U.S. Aperto’s focus is more widespread, Menezes said.

The company has a distribution agreement with Korean network outsourcer POSDATA; has deployed a pilot system with Polish operator Pronet Communications; and is trialing products with U.S. wireless ISP NextWeb in the San Francisco Bay area. All the beta systems deliver 1 M/ps of data with burst speeds up to 20 M/ps. Aperto’s technology works in the 2.5, 3.5 5.3 and 5.8 GHz spectrums, but the trials are in the 5.8 GHz range, Menezes said.

“The same equipment--the same indoor unit for the subscriber, the same base station--is used for all of those frequencies,” he said. “The difference is a different radio antenna.”

Korea is a particularly aggressive broadband market, Menezes said.

“Korea has more broadband subscribers than the United States,” he said. “They have 3.7 million subscribers, just DSL alone. In North America, you have 3.25 million, and, in Europe, you have approximately 1 million.”

Aperto has demonstrated line-of-sight (LOS), obstructed line-of-sight (OLOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) delivery with two Korean service providers as part of its POSDATA relationship, providing “a complete system for delivering services to small-to-medium-sized businesses and eventually down to residential users,” Menezes said.

The Pronet deployment includes a mix of commercial and public-sector locations, “primarily business, government and educational,” he said.

NextWeb uses the technology to offer broadband Internet access to business customers in the San Francisco area.

“We believe there’s a strong market in the United States,” Menezes agreed. “However, our company strategy from Day 1 has been not to simply focus on the U.S. market (but) … to do it in parallel--focused on the U.S. market as well as other key markets--and be very selective about them.”