Frank, thanks for the links.
I hope that these last two posts have brought a sense of reality to anyone reading themabout the legitimacy of using spread spectrum as a local transport technology for Internet access.
Here is an article on Telia's wireless network the world?s largest fixed wireless network. in Sweden, using Wi-Lans products. (Courtesy Howard Wong on the Wi-Lan thread)
canadianbusiness.com
Think Swedish, wireless
Stand atop the tallest building in Sweden and you can see the future unfold. Here?s a preview: it?s largely Canadian, it?s worth billions and you can take it anywhere.
By Andrew Wahl | June 12, 2000
Reece Merry gives a tour of Stockholm unlike any other. He starts by taking visitors to the roof of an office tower, the third of five identical buildings lined up like dominoes near Sergels Torg, the city of 700,000?s busiest square. Although they are only 17 storeys tall, and in Canada would pass for just another 1960s-style apartment complex, the Hitech Buildings?so named because they are wired with fibre optics?are the closest thing to skyscrapers the Swedish capital has. From here, the loftiest vantage point in the city core, Merry surveys the landscape below, divided by the labyrinth of streets and the waterways that flow between the city?s 14 islands.
With an outstretched arm, he directs the newcomer?s gaze to all the high points of the Swedish capital?quite literally. He points south, past the common attractions of the Riksdagshuset (parliament) and the adjacent Kungliga Slottet, the royal palace that dominates Gamla Stan island, Stockholm?s oldest quarter. Instead, he motions toward an area of the city farther to the south called Hammarby, drawing attention to a short tower adorned with white dishes. "That?s a Telia telecom tower built exclusively for the distribution of radio," he says, then swings his arm to the right. "There?s Globen," a sports arena with a ballooning white dome, "and the black building just to its front, Skattehuset, is the tax house." He turns and points west. "The building in the distance that you can see, the tall one with quite large antennae masts, that?s called Kvinnahuset, the Women?s House. It?s in a hospital district."
For Merry, a 25-year-old British Columbian, the seemingly unrelated landmarks are more than a chance to show off his grasp of Swedish place names. They?re the reason he?s in Stockholm. A senior applications engineer with Calgary-based Wi-LAN Inc., Merry picked up his life and moved to Stockholm last fall, joining his colleague, 35-year-old Calgarian Sami Dent. The buildings?the tallest in their respective neighborhoods?are base stations for sending and receiving radio signals for high-speed Internet connections, and the two Canadians are responsible for the clusters of microwave dishes and radio antennae scattered on roofs across Stockholm. But in a way, their responsibility goes way beyond that. Because the network they are helping to build in Stockholm isn?t just a test: for the future of fixed wireless, it?s the real deal.
Tech wonks have been talking about the fantastic future of wireless for years, of course. It has the potential, at least, to roll all of voice, Internet and data services into one airborne pipe?and to do it at blazing speeds. That?s what has excited investors so much in recent years, and they have turned companies like Wi-LAN?most of them with negligible revenue?into stock market darlings. But will that enthusiasm ever be rewarded with real-world results? It?s still an open question. And it?s not just a matter of technology?it does work?but also of economics. That?s why Stockholm is such a huge gamble. Granted, fixed wireless links have been used for years in local area networks (LANs) and in rural settings and they?re sprouting up in a handful of North American cities. But nowhere else has the technology been deployed on a comparable scale. Simply put, Merry and Dent are helping to roll out the world?s largest fixed wireless network. And if wireless really does represent the future, then it has to work first in Stockholm.
Telia GlobalCast Internetworking AB, a daughter of Sweden?s government-owned telecommunications giant, Telia, runs the network itself. An Internet service provider targeting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), GlobalCast connects customers to the Internet via fixed-wireless links made possible by Wi-LAN?s radio technology. The idea is to offer SMEs a high-speed alternative that?s cheaper and faster to install than technologies like T1 or cable, which rely on running fibre optic lines into an office. "Most companies find that after a few people are in the company, an ISDN connection at 128 Kbps just won?t do it. I think when you look into multiple ISDN connections, your costs go too high," Merry says. "There is no middle ground for these small businesses that want 512 Kbps. And in the case of GlobalCast, we?re saying that we will deploy within 48 hours." Backed by the capital of Telia, GlobalCast?s ambitions transcend Stockholm?s city limits?the plan is to provide high-speed wireless connections across the whole country. It has already set up service in two smaller centres: G”teberg, 350 kilometres southwest of Stockholm, and Malm”, across the resund Strait from Copenhagen, Denmark?a city in which it also has plans to establish a network.
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A common misconception about wireless is that (as the name implies) you don?t need wires to provide it.
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A common misconception about wireless is that (as the name implies) you don?t need wires to provide it. In fact, GlobalCast?s network relies on an eight-megabit, MCI WorldCom fibre-optic connection that runs underground into the Hitech Building in downtown Stockholm. GlobalCast?s technical headquarters are in a small open-concept office on the sixth floor, where from a climate-controlled back room signals are routed to Malm” and G”teberg by fibre link along railway lines. If the signal is bound for customers in Stockholm, it is directed up to the 17th floor, to the maintenance room, accessible via three locked security doors and two narrow, spiraling staircases. There, the fibre emerges from the wall and runs a few feet to a metal cabinet that?s six feet tall and has no doors. On its shelves sit a router, an Ethernet switch, media converters and Wi-LAN radios?all unassuming boxes connected by a tangle of wires.
The fibre first goes into a Cisco Systems router. Should the signal be destined for a customer that?s not in the immediate area?say, outside a 1.5-kilometre radius?it travels to one of the media converters and then is sent wirelessly, via microwave dishes, to one of the 12 other base stations located throughout the city (the tax house, say, or the hospital). If the signal is heading out to a customer serviced out of the Hitech base station, the Cisco gizmo routes it to a Bay Networks switch, and then to one of four Wi-LAN radios, which look kind of like white toasters lying on their sides. Each of these 4.5 Mb, 2.4 GHz radios sends signals through separate antennae on the roof mixing. Each antenna?a slender panel manufactured by another Canadian company, Kemptville, Ont.-based TIL-TEK Antennas Inc.?services a separate sector, between 90 and 100 degrees of the area surrounding the building. From the antennae, signals speed out through the air to the customer?s roof?not more than 1.5 or two kilometresaway and within line-of-sight of the antenna?where a dish captures them. Depending on what the customer pays, she can get a completely secure Internet feed at 256 Kbps, 512 Kbps, 1 Mbps or even up to 2 Mbps.
But that?s just the technical explanation. And technically, the same system of fibre and dishes and radios would work just about anywhere. The real question?the determining factor in whether or not wireless will work?is economics. But you can?t see that from the top of the Hitech Buildings. Instead, you need to talk to people like Raymond Jennersj”, the newly appointed president of GlobalCast.
Grab your wallet and let?s go surfing
Commercial Internet access options for large and small and medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs)
Method: DSL
Speed: 960 Kbps to 7 Mbps
Advantages: Secure access; no rewiring; independent of existing phone service
Big-biz cost: $500 installation, $1,900 a month
SME cost: $250 installation, $80 a month
Method: ISDN
Speed: 128 Kbps
Advantages: Inexpensive; multiple channels; no second phone line needed
Big-biz cost: $80 a month, plus $400 for ISP
SME cost: $210 installation, $100 a month
Method: T1
Speed: 256 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps
Advantages: Tech upgrades at no charge; dedicated network Big biz cost: From $0 to $1,500 installation, $2,000 a month, plus local loop charge
Method: Cable
Speed: 3 Mbps downstream, 400 kbps upstream
Advantages: Fast; no second phone line
SME cost: Installation from $200 to several thousand, $150 a month
Method: Wireless
Speed: 2.2 Mbps to 4.5 Mbps (Ethernet bridge); 30 Mbps (OFDM)
Advantages: No wire installation; no licensing fee; no monthly fee (permanent
solution)
Cost: $3,000 to $3,400 (Ethernet bridge); $22,500 (OFDM)
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Consumer Internet access options
Method: Dial-up
Speed: 28.8 Kbps to 56.6 Kbps
Advantages: Cheap
Cost: $25 installation; $12 to $28 a month
Method: DSL
Speed: 960 kbps downstream,
120 Kbps upstream
Advantages: No second phone line needed; secure access
Cost: $150 installation, $50 a month
Method: Cable
Speed: 3 Mbps downstream, 400 Kbps upstream
Advantages: 100 times faster than dial-up; no second phone line needed
Cost: $150 to $250 installation, $50 a month
Method: Satellite
Speed: 400 kbps downstream, 1 Mbps broadcast
Advantages: Available in rural areas
Cost: $300 software and adapter, $50 a month, plus ISP cost
His office is in Nackastrand, a new business park on the outskirts of Stockholm, a 15-minute drive and several bridges away from the city centre. GlobalCast?s executive and marketing headquarters are in a small but sunny space with room for only a handful of people?a reminder of just how young the company really is. After all, it was only in January 1999 that Telia bought GlobalCast and injected the capital it needed to expand beyond its sparse Stockholm network, built up over the previous year to serve a small number of corporate clients. Today, GlobalCast has more than 100 customers on its network and it has plans to roll out more base stations. But Jennersj”?s task is to take the company to its next level.
It?s a big job for 35-year-old Jennersj”, who comes to GlobalCast with five years under his belt as director of correspondent relations at AT&T?s Nordic and Baltic operation. Despite his relative youth, his full head of hair is already light grey. But the real telltale sign about Jennersj” is the earpiece that?s clipped to the collar of his plain white shirt, its wire running to the cell phone on his belt. That?s worth noting because, in Stockholm at least, it is so common.
Swedes are wild about wireless. Like Jennersj”, Stockholm?s citizens all seem to have a phone plugged into their ears, or carried around in their purses or on their hips. (Fashion dictates that cell phones be replaced frequently; for instance, Merry?s six-month-old Nokia is already considered, well, pass‚. Swedes, says Merry, are "more receptive to new things. They want the latest and greatest, so it?s definitely about keeping up with whatever the trends are.") In part, the popularity of wireless phones in Sweden can be attributed to the influence of homegrown LM Ericsson Telephone Co. and its close Nordic neighbor, Nokia Corp. of Finland. But it?s not just telephones. Over half the population of Sweden is logged onto the Internet, and that?s created a boom in Internet start-ups. An estimated 900 Net-related companies have sprouted up in Stockholm?one for every 850 of its residents and more per capita than any other European centre. "We are very quick adapters," says Jennersj”, "and this is driving the need for broadband."
As Jennersj” sees it, a window of opportunity has opened for GlobalCast, because the supply of fibre and cable links has been slow to meet the swelling demand for high-speed access. "Not every company has the chance of getting the service wire from the vendor," says Jennersj”. "The key thing we?re counting on is that from the first contact to the installation, it shouldn?t take us more than 48 hours." GlobalCast has carefully selected its market niche. Compared to cable connections, Jennersj” admits his company is not really competitive?but while there are some 320,000 home consumer cable TV subscribers in Sweden, few businesses have that option. Jennersj” also readily admits that larger businesses need a lot more raw speed than GlobalCast can currently provide, and with Stockholm?s substantial fibre networks, it?s not too difficult to gain access. But GlobalCast has a sweet spot: smaller and medium-sized corporations looking for an affordable way to get more juice.
Take IT Arkiterna, a local IT consultancy. With 60 people on its ISDN connection, it was starting to get bogged down in Internet traffic. "We host our Web site and e-mail ourselves," says Mikael Ener, who?s in charge of the company?s Internet operations. "We needed more outgoing speed." It cost 25,000 kronor ($4,200) to install the fixed wireless link a year ago, which was a little more expensive than a cable connection at a comparable 512K bandwidth, but the 5,000-kronor-per-month ($840) wireless service fee was cheaper than cable. And, Ener adds, "if I want more bandwidth, I just call them."
By comparison, fibre normally costs a company around 4,000 kronor as a monthly service, but it takes weeks?and upwards of 50,000 kronor?to install. Still, those prices are being forced down by energy companies as they enter an already competitive telco arena, according to Anders Rankila, a broadband consultant with PA Konsult AB. Radio links, in his view, will have a tough time breaking into regions serviced by fibre. And he figures the consumer market is already sewn up with cable and Telia?s high-quality ADSL copper lines. "The room for Telia is to be able to offer it in difficult places," Rankila says, "where there is no fibre infrastructure."
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Fibre "is most probably much more expensive than just establishing a base station and getting coverage for the whole area," says Jennersj”.
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Jennersj” agrees. New business parks in smaller Swedish towns comprise one target market?wireless would be an alternative to laying fresh fibre. Fibre "is most probably much more expensive than just establishing a base station and getting coverage for the whole area," says Jennersj”. "For us, it?s an easy, quick way of deploying our service and being able to offer it in a large area." But while GlobalCast is forging ahead with base stations throughout the region, he says the company has reached a plateau with its rate of customer adoption. "I would say that with our current services, this is what we?ll get," he says. "The service we?re offering right now is very limited. It?s Internet access at various bandwidths; we can offer firewalls and radio LANs." Jennersj” and his team plan to grow the business by adding new services (Web hosting is at the top of the list) through the summer. "Our customers in Sweden, they are used to a certain set of services from their ISPs and they expect nothing less."
But over the long term, the real potential for GlobalCast?and for Wi-LAN?lies in higher-speed connections. One giant step toward that goal is licensed frequencies, widely expected to be issued this fall by Sweden?s national regulator. Currently, GlobalCast relies on unlicensed frequencies and low-powered devices to send signals, and these ultimately limit the bandwidth it can offer. (They also make for lower barriers to entry: small fixed wireless operators spring up regularly; there are at least four of them in Stockholm, although no one seems certain of the exact number.) By getting access to new licensed frequencies, GlobalCast has the chance to upgrade its network to use the next generation of signal transmission technology, called OFDM. And that?s where Wi-LAN fits in again.
Wi-LAN already holds an important patent on OFDM technology (see "Snipping Cisco?s wire," Canadian Business, May 1). And Wi-LAN?s new radios could be transmitting blazing 30-Mbps signals in little more than a year. "More and more users want faster and faster connections?they?re just not happy if they have to wait more than a second," says Merry. With those faster connections just around the corner, the Stockholm fixed-wireless project is "a preliminary move to get the customer base up, and to build the network around," Merry explains. "Then we?ll bring the OFDM in on the licensed frequencies that GlobalCast obtains, hopefully in less than a year."
Because it will transmit at higher power, the new network will be less dependent on line-of-sight, creating more flexibility in how it is set up. As well, the massive increase in bandwidth opens up a whole new realm of service options, including voice over Internet protocol, high-quality video and greater mobility. Jennersj” predicts the next step will be to take wireless broadband all the way to the laptop?providing access virtually anywhere, from the office to the cafeteria. "I think we?re just at the beginning of this wireless broadband era," says Jennersj”. "I think we should use radio technology?s strength to deploy a service with mobility. What?s it worth to have a fibre connection in your office wall if you want to sit at the waterfront? We hope to help that along."
The key, however, is to have the network up and running. Right now, fixed-wireless Internet access has limited uses. But the fact that a major telecommunications company like Telia has launched itself down the path of creating the infrastructure?and openly plans to expand it into neighboring countries?is a testament to the possibilities. And it?s getting noticed. Jennersj” says he is regularly visited by telecommunications and Internet executives from around the world?drawn by the potential fixed wireless holds not only for high-tech bastions like Sweden, but also for developing regions where telecommunications infrastructure is practically non-existent.
So next time you?re in Harare, or Beijing, or even Paris, don?t be surprised to see a man standing on top of the tallest building in town, his arm in the air, pointing to seemingly unconnected landmarks. After all, it might be Reece Merry, conducting one of his special tours. And he just might be pointing to the future. |
