CoWave suggests a new way of fixed-wireless networking

After retrenching in 2001, Broadband fixed-wireless service providers are seeking new technologies that use existing deployments and move fixed wireless into the next generation in 2002. That scenario jives with technology development plans for CoWave Networks’ repeater-based mesh topology that can take advantage of deployed--but now stagnant—fixed-wireless systems and make it easy for operators add new subscribers.

CoWave will try its concept with a major service provider later this year, then roll out in 2003-2004, said Chau Jasty, CoWave’s marketing director and a company co-founder.

“People like Sprint [the industry’s largest service provider, which put a moratorium on deployments last year] were expecting to get some solutions to solve this problem,” said Jasty.

This gives them time to look at CoWave’s mesh technology, with which each subscriber receives and repeats the entire data stream and moves the signal along to the next user.

“As a result, we’re able to cover larger areas with far fewer base stations,” Jasty said.

CoWave’s technology will cost between $30 and $400 per subscriber, Jasty said. About 80% of all subscribers will have indoor consumer premises equipment, which is where existing networks can benefit from moving to the mesh topology, he said.

“The best thing would be to take those initial [deployed fixed broadband wireless] customers and give them a CoWave CPE with an outdoor antenna,” Jasty explained.

This seeds the territory and covers the initial point of the mesh topology.

“You need the immediate points to do the repeating for you,” Jasty said, noting that CoWave suggests a minimum of one subscriber per square mile with an outdoor CPE. “Once we have the mesh started, you can have other people come on and take advantage of the mesh coverage that is provided by the CPEs with the outdoor antenna.”

CoWave’s model, like almost everything in the fixed broadband space, is proprietary.

“There is no provision [in the standards] for mesh topology,” Jasty said. “They all seem to take point-to-multipoint topology as a given. Our goal is to work with the bodies and start proposing standards around the mesh topology.”

The industry’s misfortune--almost every major service provider retrenched in 2001 while awaiting next-generation wireless gear to lower subscriber costs and remove installation barriers--is CoWave’s gain, because it gives the company time to test and then market its approach, said Jasty.

“Our belief is that, with the right solution at the right price point, people will be prepared to deploy it, but that is not going to happen in 2002,” he said. “In 2003, they’ll start to do some deployments and, in 2004, there will be major deployments.”

CoWave is “frequency agnostic,” but its solutions are targeted at users in frequencies below 6 GHz, including residential and small-business networks. It can deliver “multi-megabits” of data across the network, Jasty said.