Verizon makes use of 2.3 GHz wireless spectrum with Virginia trial

Verizon is making use of its dormant 2.3 GHz wireless spectrum to test the efficiency of fixed broadband wireless high-speed data services as a supplement and expansion of existing ADSL service. The trial, which started July 18 and will continue to the end of the year, is taking place in Fairfax County, Va., starting with Verizon employees and expanding out into a small chunk of the customer base.

“We’re going to be executing this trial to thoroughly evaluate the performance and functionality of the technology to identify, and confirm its central role providing broadband access to customers who don’t necessarily have access to ADSL,” said Brian Whitton, Verizon’s executive director of network platform evolution for Verizon.

BeamReach Networks, a Sunnyvale, Calif., vendor in whom Verizon has a financial stake, is providing the trial gear, including base station electronics, antennas and residential receivers spread out. Verizon has located base stations in cellular tower sites in Herndon and Certerville, Va., with a 5-mile radius. The sites are linked back to Verizon central offices via fiber optics.

The trial will determine the ability of BeamReach’s beam forming technology to overcome line-of-sight obstacles to deliver a maximum of 1.5 Mb/s of downstream bandwidth and 1.2 Mb/s up. That bandwidth is rate-adapted so that at the most distant point, a subscriber would still receive 768 kb/s of data, Whitton said.

“We’ll be conducting hundreds of tests, collecting samples that allow us to characterize the propagation characteristics,” Whitton said.

Virginia’s hilly, foliated terrain will provide a test for the non-line-of-sight claims, which is one reason Verizon located the initial trial there. Besides, he said, “we wanted to do it where we had a license.”

The license, for 10 MHz in the 2.3 GHz spectrum, was purchased during the FCC’s 1997 spectrum sale, Whitton said.

“We see owning licenses as being critical to ensure that we can provide a quality of service our customers demand,” he said.

BeamReach, he said, is a step ahead of others in developing gear for the 2.3 GHz space.

Most other companies “are still in the drawing board stage,” he said. BeamReach “is certainly state-of-the-art, next generation, the most advanced generation of wireless technology currently available.”