WorldCom rolls out two more fixed-wireless markets

WorldCom has begun delivering high-speed data services to small and medium-sized business (SMB) customers in Bakersfield, Calif., and Chattanooga, Tenn., using fixed-wireless technology.

“We’ve been careful with our business model,” said WorldCom’s Joe Brooks, vice president of sales market development for Broadband Solutions. “We’ve been quiet on purpose,” noting that fixed-wireless technology “matches WorldCom’s suite of services very effectively [and] complements and competes with DSL services.”

The two new markets join WorldCom systems in Memphis, Tenn., Jackson, Miss., and Baton Rouge, La. WorldCom has “hundreds of customers [and] … by the end of the third quarter, we’ll be in 13 markets,” Brooks said.

Bakersfield “is a pretty good market for us; it’s flat,” while Chattanooga will be “a more geographically challenged market for us,” he said.

The market has been “very receptive” to three WorldCom commercial offerings: 384 Kbps symmetrical for $199 per month; 768/512 Kbps asymmetrical for $399 per month; and 1.024 M/ps/512 Kbps for $599 per month. Installation is $1,000.

Like most in the wireless industry, Brooks said Nortel is “looking for some standards” from its vendors, which are being battered by “all the stuff that’s gone on in the capital markets.”

“We need some vendors to commit to the market and stay in,” he said, alluding to reports that some major vendors might drop out of the wireless business while others are waffling on “trying to decide on where they’re going to spend their capital.”

WorldCom, he emphasized, “is very bullish on fixed wireless broadband