BeamReach dips into WCS band for broadband delivery

The Federal Communications Commission [FCC] has granted BeamReach Networks a nationwide experimental license in the WCS band trial its broadband wireless access systems. The WCS band consists of two separate 15 MHz chunks of bandwidth in the 2.3 GHz spectrum. WCS license holders include Verizon, BellSouth, AT&T and Metricom, as well as a number of smaller players.

WCS generally has not been used as a last-mile delivery mechanism, because its two 15 MHz swath is narrow--substantially less than the 192 MHz available in the 2.5-2.7 GHz MMDS spectrum--and demands high spectral efficiency, meaning generally smaller, less economic base station sites. BeamReach intends to overcome this shortcoming by building larger cell sites--with 4 to 5 miles reach in urban areas, 15 to 20 miles reach in rural areas--by reusing the spectrum.

“We bring a product that is spectrally efficient, gives you good coverage and, suddenly, the WCS band makes a lot of sense because you can deliver a lot of megabits out of the system,” said Bernard Aboussouan, BeamReach’s marketing vice president.

BeamReach will trial its voice, data and streaming media delivery product with an unnamed customer and plans release for the first half of next year, Aboussouan said.

“We’re unique in what we’re doing, and, for the people who have the spectrum and are considering offering broadband services, we’re pretty much the only game in town,”he said.

BeamReach’s selling point is its ability to reuse spectrum and deliver a stronger signal without adding expensive base stations closer to the users.

“You have a factor of 25 times more base stations at a one-mile radius than you have at a five-mile radius,” he said. “It’s not so much the cost of the base station, it’s the cost of finding that base station and those are every expensive. We believe in business case where the area that you need to cover has to be relatively large to make economic sense.”

BeamReach uses beam-forming technology.

“We can talk to multiple users,” he said. “That’s one of the issues with large cells. When you start increasing the cell, then you have a lot more subscribers to serve from one central point and you need a lot more capacity and spectral efficiency. It’s really the combination of those two elements that we believe set us apart--being able to do large coverage, but more than that, being able to support a lot of subscribers from one single point.”

The broadband fixed-wireless business has been hit hard by Sprint’s decision to stop deploying product until second-generation gear that obviates line-of-sight problems becomes available. BeamReach agrees that second-generation gear is essential and is working in the MMDS space as well, Aboussouan said.

“Draw a business case, and you figure out there’s no way the operators are going to make money with first-generation equipment,” he said. “Clearly, 2G is required. The question is: Who’s going to be around?”

In answer to that question, he points to BeamReach.