Broadband Wireless and Fire

A couple of years ago it would have been editorial suicide for a telecom business magazine to devote its cover and cover story to a profile of a broadband wireless company. In fact, Wireless Review's sister publication, Telephony, launched a new format and design in 2001 that featured an investigative report by our man Dan O'Shea abou the rise and fall of Teligent and its iconoclastic leader, Alex Mandl. That was the thing back then with regard to broadband wireless: The stories were all about hype and heartbreak, not innovation and success.

That's all different now. It is with great confidence and satisfaction that Wireless Review devotes this month's cover story to TowerStream, a provider of broadband wireless services and one of the leaders of the sector's renaissance.

Inevitably we all will look back one day — many of us already are — and try to figure out what went wrong with broadband wireless that made the Teligents and the Winstars of the world go down in a blaze of ignominy. My sense is that is was part poor timing, part technological trip-ups, part management shortfalls and part of the whole dotcom telecom flameout that scorched the end of the last millennium.

You may have a different sense. We're probably all correct.

What we know now is that broadband wireless is back with a vengeance and outfits like TowerStream are leading the revival.

Ironically enough, as the inimitable Kevin Fitchard points out in his story, which begins on page 30, TowerStream's strategy is actually somewhat shockingly similar to that of Teligent and Winstar. The company, like those that burned mightily before it, is peppering the skylines of major urban centers with broadband wireless gear, pursuing business in the enterprise access market that these charred predecessors ultimately failed to secure. How TowerStream will fare is obviously yet to be determined, but today's technological and financial market is dramatically different.

That's all I'll say about Fitchard's story for fear of stealing his thunder and the inevitable intra-office dissent that goes along with that. Suffice it to say that efforts like TowerStream's mark the undeniable reignition of broadband wireless.