By Wharton Rivers
Advanced Radio Telecom (ART)
from the January 22, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
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Wharton "Zie" Rivers is CEO of Advanced Radio Telecom (ART), a leading fixed broadband wireless Internet Protocol access services provider. Rivers also has held executive positions with Cable & Wireless North America, Ameritech and MCI.
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Imagine running a business without electricity. Or without phone service, plumbing or heat. It would be virtually impossible.
The next basic business utility coming down the pike? Broadband Internet access. In the not-too-distant future companies without reliable, flexible broadband Internet access will not be able to effectively compete, no matter their industry.
Today, broadband is making business better. Not everyone has it, so those companies that do have an advantage over those that don't. Soon, however, broadband will be a universal standard that raises the playing field to another level. If you don't have it, you won't get in the game.
According to an eMarketer report from September of this year, in 1999 U.S. business broadband users numbered 3.49 million. By 2003, that figure will reach 11.3 million-3.09 million of them using wireless. The report goes on to say that by 2003, U.S. wireless broadband revenue will reach $3.447 billion, up from $61 million in 1999.
What does this mean when you boil it down? It's clear evidence that businesses see broadband as a necessity for how they will conduct business in the future, and that wireless access to broadband connectivity will also grow by leaps and bounds.
I believe this rapid acceleration of broadband usage will feed upon itself. End-user customers will seek out companies that can deliver content-rich information and transactions via broadband. This, in turn, will cause more businesses to adopt broadband as a core business tool to meet customer demand. As more and more companies become truly broadband-enabled, others who are not will either make the change or risk missing a crucial business solution.
I also believe that wireless will provide a critical link for those companies and organizations that need broadband connectivity.
Why? Because the major obstacle that stands in the way of universal adoption of broadband is the last-mile bottleneck: the speed gap that exists between a company's LAN and its WAN or Internet backbone.
Businesses fortunate enough to be in buildings that are wired with fiber optic cable effectively bypass the bottleneck, making this gap virtually non-existent. The problem is that only about 5 percent of the office buildings in the United States are wired with fiber. The simple truth is that fiber is extremely expensive, and is very disruptive to install.
Another obstacle is the long delay that businesses face when they depend on local telephone companies and exchanges to connect them to the Internet.
These obstacles can be solved, however, through fixed wireless technology.
Using fixed wireless, Internet traffic is routed from a user's desktop to the building rooftop, where it is then transmitted via wireless radio spectrum to a local POP (point-of-presence) or "traffic aggregator" located elsewhere in the city. From there it is transported to a long-haul carrier. Bottleneck bypassed, obstacle eliminated.
I recently met with a customer in Houston-a small- to medium-sized design firm. They signed up for service with our company because they needed reliable broadband Internet access, they didn't want to wait forever to get it and the price was right. We were able to provide them the value proposition they need. I believe there are literally thousands upon thousands of businesses, large and small, who will be looking for this same proposition in the years to come.
This is the new "sweet spot" in our industry: businesses who see broadband as a necessity for doing business. The winners will be not only those adopters of the technology, but the companies who can deliver on the promise of business's next utility. |
