Dedicated to 5.8GHz

Although the fixed-wireless market has been financially stormy lately, Adaptive Broadband (www.adaptivebroadband.com) has chosen to stay in the arena. However, the company has refocused its business on providing products to carriers in the 5.8GHz unlicensed band.

“The drivers for broadband access haven’t been disturbed by the economic downturn,” said Franchesca Walker, Adaptive Broadband vice president of marketing, during Supercomm 2001.

But there are caveats. To remain profitable in the broadband market, Adaptive Broadband needed a niche and customers with money to spend.

So early this year, Adaptive Broadband chose to focus on the 5.8GHz band because it was virgin territory for vendors, according to Walker.

“5.8GHz is not as crowded and doesn’t have interference issues like 2.4GHz,” she added. “Very established companies such as Cisco and Wi-LAN are talking about getting into this space.”

Another benefit of the 5.8GHz band is that many carriers outside the United States, and thus untouched by the country’s economic problems, operate in it. Walker said that 60% to 70% of Adaptive Broadband’s revenues this year would come from the international market. There has been a lot of interest in point-to-multipoint fixed wireless from companies in China, Hong Kong, India and Korea, she said.

In contrast to foreign buyers, U.S. companies prefer Adaptive Broadband’s point-to-point product, Walker said.

At Supercomm, the company introduced the AB-Access Extender, a new point-to-point system; and announced an update of its network element-management software, which is designed to support laptops and PDAs.