Carriers slow to adopt optical wireless

SAN FRANCICSCO (Telephony)--Carriers trying to fill the huge gap between fiber and copper should be making optical wireless solutions a part of their network strategy, at least in the opinion of a panel of free-space optics executives at the NGN Ventures conference.

“If we don’t get something between Sonet and copper, we’re not going to have broadband access,” said John McQuillan, president of McQuillan Ventures, the conference host.

Free-space optics—which uses line-of-sight lasers—offers numerous advantages to carriers that want to connect to the 70% of buildings that are within a mile of a fiber connection, the executives said. They include a lower cost of deployment, a capital expense that is a third—or less—the cost of fiber and the ability to provision within two weeks.

Another is the portability of the equipment, which allows a carrier to uninstall free-space optics gear if the desired in-building customer penetration is not achieved, said John Griffin, president and CEO of LightPointe Communications.

“It’s an additional option for getting a customer on-net quickly,” Griffin said. “We’re trying to get carriers to accelerate their business plans; we’re not asking them to make a right or left turn.”

LightPointe, a startup with about $19 million in funding so far, has nine carriers in field trials and expects to announce a major carrier contract next month, Griffin added.

Despite the numerous advantages touted by vendors, however, free-space optics hasn’t been widely deployed. “Why aren’t we celebrating the year of free-space optics?” asked Jim Dunn, CEO of AirFiber, a vendor that recently raised $50 million in its third round of financing.

According to Dunn, the problem was that first generation equipment lacked a networking vision and wasn’t capable of being carrier class. In addition, the technology is still plagued by the perception that weather attenuation caused by dense fog is a significant barrier to its use.

But the second generation of free-space optics equipment is mitigating those issues, Dunn said, adding that new gear is deployable in mesh architectures and offers RF redundancy.

In addition, networks can be designed to reduce problems with fog. “Within 140 meters you can ignore fog as a consideration,” Dunn said. “You can engineer around it.”

According to Allied Business Intelligence, the market for free-space optics transceivers will reach $4.4 billion annually by 2005, which is causing a spate of fundings for free-space optics companies, said Adam Grosser, general partner of Foundation Capital. “Everybody with a flashlight is in the free-space optics business,” he joked.