Platinum Communications
If the economics of fixed wireless broadband put you off the technology because you could not recoup CPE or installation costs from residential users, WaveRider has an self-install option that could change your perspective.
by Gerry Blackwell
[May 22, 2001]
If you operate an ISP and you're looking to provide consumer and small-office or home-office broadband access, you may have considered fixed wireless technology and already rejected it. Wireless makes sense for business customers who are willing to pay more for high-speed access. But the consumer market will only bear so much. When you factor in the cost of the wireless customer premises equipment (CPE), the cost of sending someone out to install a wireless connection, and the fact that even then, some—perhaps many—customers will end up not having line of sight to your transmitter, the economics begin to look dodgy at best. But all that may be about to change. DIY Wi-Fi
The holy grail of wireless networking in the consumer market is non-line-of-sight (NLOS) CPE that customers can install themselves inside their homes. The antenna doesn't have to be aimed and even positioning is not that critical. It becomes no more difficult than installing a modem and a network card. Many vendors say they will have such equipment. But only one we know of actually has customer-installable, NLOS fixed wireless gear in the field right now. Toronto-based WaveRider Communications Inc. officially launched its LMS3000 product line in April, but the first customers already had networks up and running by then. LMS3000 operates in the unlicensed 902 - 908 MHz band. Platinum Communications, an ISP in tiny Okotoks, Alberta just south of Calgary in Canada's western prairies, built the first two LMS3000 networks in Okotoks and nearby High River, each with about 10,000 souls. Platinum has been turning on paying customers—they pay $40 to $50 a month—since early April. As of late April, it had about 150 online. But Platinum COO Allen Stretton believes the company can sign up "tens of thousands" of new subscribers over the next 30 to 36 months. The company plans to launch service in four or five more small markets before the end of this year and hopes to have about 2,500 customers by then. His optimism is based on the company's first experience marketing the service last fall when it thought WaveRider would be delivering the LMS3000 product much earlier than it did. At that point it had expressions of interest from 700 potential subscribers in Okotoks and High River alone. For customers in town, the NLOS technology works fine, Stretton says. For customers further out in nearby farmlands it's sometimes necessary to use different antennas and establish a line-of-sight connection. Platinum has to do the installation and those customers pay more.
<Click> to discuss self-install antennas or other fixed wireless technologies.
WaveRider tells customers the LMS3000 radios work in customer-installable, NLOS mode over a range of about 1.5 miles. In fact, they often go further, says vice president of sales and marketing Charles Brown, but the company would rather "under promise and over deliver."
Similarly, the radios are capable of 2.75 Mbps but WaveRider quotes 1 Mbps. Platinum is choking them back and offering customers 384 Kbps guaranteed—about the same as residential DSL service. And for about the same price. But with the next software release from WaveRider, it should be practical to open it up again, Stretton says. The company is targeting mainly residential and SOHO customers in the two communities. Telecommuters are another possible target market—Okotoks and High River are bedroom communities for Calgary. But it will have to wait again for the next software upgrade in May. The new software will let LMS3000 will work with corporate firewalls. For Platinum, which was already offering broadband access to some business customers using 2.4 GHz fixed wireless technology and also reselling DSL, the LMS3000 proposition was very appealing. "The biggest thing," says Stretton, "is that we own the network. The equipment is controlled by us—all the radios, towers, routers. We own that process." Resale controls
Platinum already knows from experience that it's a whole different thing reselling telco DSL. "If you go with DSL, then you're depending on somebody else," Stretton say. "They can change their pricing. They can give service or not. They can increase the time it takes to get a line. The process is out of your control." The business case for LMS3000 looked better too. The pay-back period on the investment needed to resell DSL is in the 30-month range, Stretton says. "You've got to have deep, deep pockets. With wireless, it's still a major capital cost, but it's only 50 to 60 per cent of what it is for DSL." Platinum is amortizing the cost of the WaveRider equipment over three or four years and, in effect, renting the CPE to customers. Doing it that way, Stretton says, the company can break even on a month-to-month basis right out of the gate. To be profitable in the long haul, he figures he needs only 350 subscribers per tower site. Not that LMS3000 has been all roses and clover. Stretton admits Platinum has arrows to show for its pioneering work with the new technology. "It caused us a lot of grief." He won't be much more specific, but it wasn't just learning RF—which Platinum already knew in any case. It was also working the bugs out of the new NLOS technology, which nobody else had done before. Stretton suggests, only half joking, that if other ISPs want to deploy LMS3000 networks, they should hire his company to install the equipment. The WaveRider consulting group is good, he notes, "but they don't work for you, they work for WaveRider." Having said that, Stretton notes that "once it's up and running, it's a fairly low-maintenance network. It's not like you're having tons of people going back and forth to the customer's premises. The tech support costs are minimal." Faster future?
As for the relatively low bandwidth, another possible downside to LMS3000, Stretton believes the bandwidth is plenty high enough to compete with wireline alternatives. And the equipment will get faster, he predicts. Is LMS3000 the holy grail? Nah. It's probably just the first in a series of workable product offerings from a variety of vendors to feature customer-installable NLOS CPE. In the meantime, though, it does appear to be the only game in town. —End
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