InTeligent Challenger

Building by building, market by market, microwave point-to-multipoint provider Teligent is building high-speed networks on a nationwide basis and preparing to take over the wireless world. After rolling out 15 markets in 1998, Teligent raised a few eyebrows. By the time it launches 25 more markets by year-end, Teligent will have the industry's full attention. In just 15 months, Teligent will have launched 40 markets, a speed that has not been achieved before. It's not finished yet.

According to Kirby "Buddy" Pickle Jr., president & COO, Teligent will complete build-out in all 74 of the domestic markets in which it owns spectrum licenses by the end of 2000.

Alex Mandl, Teligent chairman & CEO, said 1999 will be a key year for fixed wireless and Teligent.

"When I decided to do this more than two years ago, there weren't a lot of people who even knew what (LMDS) is," he said. "Today, I think everybody in the industry recognizes that fixed-wireless networks and point-to-multipoint networks will be a very important part of how the industry will evolve."

In the past two years, Teligent has forced incumbents to recognize it and its technology.

"Our offer is directly intended to take customers away from the LECs," said Mandl. "Ninety-five percent of the local revenue base is still with the LECs. That's what we're after."

Build-Out Beginnings

Teligent's target subscriber base is small to medium businesses in downtown and suburban markets with 10 to 350 business lines. Before launching in October 1998, Teligent had to solve IT, regulatory and organizational infrastructure challenges. Last year, it created the infrastructure required to provide services.

"A huge IT infrastructure is required because if you want to provide a combination of voice and data over a local and long-distance circuit, you have a variety of IT protocols that have to be combined," Pickle said.

Then Teligent had to procure CLEC certification and interconnection agreements in all markets. Pickle said there was initial concern that the regulatory organization couldn't keep up with the company's network build-out demands. The build-out went faster than expected, so much so that Teligent's original plan to launch 10 markets in 1998 was raised to 15.

The provider also worried about the states' reaction to its presence.

"Actually, the states have welcomed us with open arms; they see facilities-based competition as something good, and they think that we can help them do that," he said.

Teligent Technology

Teligent combines microwave technology with the concept of multipoint to get high levels of efficiency from the radio channel.

According to Keith Kaczmarek, senior vice president, engineering & operations, Teligent builds its initial base stations and does frequency planning and designing according to where the traffic is and the customers' capacity needs in those areas. Meeting those needs requires defined geographic coverage rather than broad coverage.

Teligent's digital SmartWave technology uses a complex digital-modulation technique that varies from 4QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation, which is a technique for transmitting bits over the air) to 64QAM, a level that provides high efficiency and spectrum usage.

Because everything is ATM-formatted, the network can handle any type of traffic.

"If the customer needs voice, we can transmit voice. If the needs change over time to more of a data need, the ATM format will allow data traffic to all be carried over that same pipe," he said. The technology is designed for 99.99% availability and high reliability.

Teligent's network features a Class 5 central-office switch similar to a traditional landline or cellular network. The company installs a 12-inch dish on top of a customer building, and all of the customer's traffic, whether it be voice, data or video, is routed to this antenna. The traffic is converted into ATM format and transmitted via ATM to Teligent's base station where it's taken off the air and routed back to the central-office switch. Traffic hits an ATM switch before the central-office switch and then routes to the Internet, the data world or the circuit-switched world.

"We have the ability to provide flexible use of the spectrum, technology and equipment to provide minimal bandwidth or maximum bandwidth to our customers," Kaczmarek said. "We can put somewhere between four T1s worth of capacity all the way up to a DS3 worth of capacity in a building."

With flexible bandwidth, Teligent can drop a small or large amount of capacity into a building, and LECs or legacy systems do not encumber it.

"What we've built over the past two years has allowed us to take what's best in the marketplace, whether it's operational support systems or the technology that we're deploying," he said.

Teligent's compact equipment includes a 12-inch dish that can go almost anywhere on a rooftop. It's easy to mount and aesthetically unobtrusive. There's also an indoor unit the size of a small refrigerator that requires good ac power and access to the building's internal phone wiring.

Kaczmarek said there's plenty of redundancy relative to power. Battery backup is installed at all sites, at the customer building, at the nodal site, at network operation centers and at central offices. Teligent's central network operations center is located in Herndon, VA, where a team works seven days a week, 24 hours a day, monitoring the network, calling out, dispatching, tracking performance and analyzing operations.

So far, network capacity has met subscriber demand, Kaczmarek said.

"We have the ability, in the base station at the node level, to use multiple sectors so we can take a base station and either do four sectors with 90-degree antennas, all the way down to 15-degree antennas, which give you 24 sectors to get high capacity," he said.

Beyond 64QAM, Teligent can reach higher levels of efficiency and capacity by taking full advantage of ATM protocols. Unhampered by standards, it can optimize and deploy technology quickly.

"Our objective is constantly driving toward higher capacity and higher performance at a lower cost," Kaczmarek said. "Plans are in place that will allow the technology we have today to grow and evolve with customer demand and needs."

Kaczkmarek said subscribers have been receptive to the services and technology Teligent offers.

"(Our) focus is clearly from an end-to-end network perspective, providing the services that customers need, the high bandwidth, the availability and the overall reliability," he said. "No one in the past has offered high-speed, multimegabit Internet access."

Fixed Is the Future

Mandl said Teligent has adequate spectrum to build out its network for now, but he won't rule out seeking additional spectrum in the 24GHz band in the future, if "the economics make sense and the opportunity presents itself."

Teligent's immediate goals include ramping up revenue and launching 25 more markets by the end of 1999.

"Being fully operational in 40 of the major markets across the country really gives us a national footprint by the end of this year, which will be critical," Mandl said.

Teligent also is looking across the pond for point-to-multipoint opportunities. According to Pickle, the provider will launch international service in the next few years. He added that the third- or fourth-largest international city would provide much more value than the 75th market in the United States.

Teligent also may throw its hat into the residential ring.

"We'll probably do it in a phased approach," Pickle said. "We'll address the multi-dwelling unit marketplace, townhomes, apartments, within our nodal coverage areas. We can very easily put an antenna on top of a building and provide service to tenants."

But Pickle said the price of the radio and spectrum availability don't make household subscribers an attractive prospect at this time.

Teligent is building a network today that can handle the switched-voice business efficiently, but the network's data architecture will enable it to serve customers in the full data environment of tomorrow. With the industry watching its every move, Teligent is primed to offer the services of the future.

"We are going to develop a very intensive communications company, not just a telecommunications company, but a communications company that encompasses voice, data and video communications in an applications format that is unlimited," Pickle said.

How does Teligent make its site-acquisition decisions? It uses a geospatial solution powered by Informix's database technology, which allows it to make key business decisions based on visual data rather than numerical comparisons. The web-enabled Site Acquisition System (SAS) helps Teligent's sales managers target potential customers. SAS analyzes customer and site demographic information within the Informix Dynamic Server with the Universal Data Option to locate prime buildings for installing Teligent's equipment.

The system's geospatial capabilities, supported by MapInfo SpatialWare DataBlade Module and MapInfo Geocoding DataBlade Module, lay out critical business information in a map interface. The Web-Integration Option allows Teligent's field locations to remotely access, update and track site-acquisition activities across its expanding markets.

As you prepare to take on local service providers, you need to ensure your network will run as efficiently as possible. A new technology development, time division duplexing (TDD), can help you do just that. Unlike typical frequency division duplexing, TDD-based point-to-multipoint systems use one frequency for both transmit and receive. Non-TDD systems require two frequencies, one for transmit and one for receive. Because TDD uses only one frequency, you can allocate capacity in either direction. These systems don't require guardbands for transmit/receive separation, which saves you even more capacity. In addition, they offer high-frequency reuse. TDD systems provide bandwidth-on-demand capabilities, which allow you to offer flexible services and specify the bandwidth you need for individual users. Your network can adapt to real-life traffic patterns and maximize channel usage.

A handful of vendors already are deploying this technology. Wavtrace announced that Virginia Tech will deploy its system in May, and Formus Communications currently is beta testing the system. Wavtrace's PTM 1000 product family will support 10GHz to 42GHz licenses. Adaptive Broadband's AB-Access system is currently in field trials with a pilot launch scheduled for April and full deployment in 2000. The current product operates in the 5GHz band, but eventually will support 2GHz to 42GHz. Ensemble Communications is conducting lab testing of its TDD-based Adaptive Broadband Access system. Beta trials will begin third quarter.

Conventional Approach: Fixed partition of spectrum into forward and return channels.

AB-Access Approach: Dynamic use of spectrum reflecting demand and priorities.