Build It or Lose It

Golden West Companies, a Rapid City, SD, LEC (www.goldenwest.com), owns PCS spectrum but hasn't offered mobile wireless service. Looking for a way to get a return on its investment, as well as fulfill FCC usage requirements for the spectrum, Golden West decided to become a fixed-wireless ISP serving residential and business markets.

It turned to Airspan's wireless DSL AS4000 platform (www.airspan.com) to do this, using two centrally located base stations with a line-of-sight operation of more than 20 miles, enough to cover Rapid City's 70,000 residents and 2,200 businesses.

Dave Reeder, Airspan vice president of sales, said his company is in talks with 10 to 15 owners of PCS spectrum facing FCC 5-year build-out deadlines. For many D-, E-, and F-block licensees, the deadline is April of 2002 to build out 25% of their POPs.

“The business case for mobility in many small towns isn't strong,” Reeder pointed out, especially when existing carriers have national footprints.

“Who wants to be fifth to market?” he asked.

Airspan's solution allows carriers to offer voice, data or a combination on the same platform. Many already are LECs or CLECs, so this is a way to expand their coverage wirelessly.

Reeder said some carriers are apprehensive whether a data-only play will fulfill the requirements of the license.

“I would say about 90% of the attorneys for these companies feel strongly that (it will),” he said. “A couple of carriers say they're a little nervous, ‘so throw in voice to cover our bet.’” But he said most of the business cases are built on the Internet access.

Another wireless-broadband vendor targeting the PCS carriers for build-out is Soma Networks (www.somanetworks.com), which also has a product offering both voice and high-speed data. (See story on page 28.)

“There are a lot of carriers with licenses and requirements to build out, and we confirmed that fixed wireless is a viable way to meet those requirements,” said Tom Flak, Soma vice president of marketing.

Soma obtained a legal opinion that the FCC would approve using the PCS band for fixed wireless, something AT&T Wireless (www.attws.com) already is doing with its fixed-wireless broadband offering.

“A lot of licenses out there aren't being used for PCS,” said Peter Jarich, Strategis Group director of broadband research (www.strategisgroup.com). “In the secondary and tertiary markets, there's no need for all that spectrum.”

Using fixed wireless will allow licensees to hold onto their licenses and make some money at the same time.

“And as tertiary markets are where people are having a difficult time getting high-speed Internet, it's really a good fit,” Jarich said.