DO IT YOURSELF FOR WAVC
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WAVC article from Wireless Today....
Hawking The 'Holy Grail' Of Broadband
By Malcolm Spicer, mspicer@pbimedia.com
If wireless broadband services' biggest problem is dispatching crews to hook up new customers,
WaveRider Communications [WAVC] and BroadJump each have an answer, albeit with
different methods.
Toronto-based WaveRider last week received approval from the FCC and Industry Canada for
its LMS3000 wireless modem. LMS3000 modems enable wireless broadband providers operating
in 900 MHz spectrum to reach customers without requiring line-of-sight connections from base
stations to modems, said Charles Brown, WaveRider vice president of sales and marketing.
"It is a true non-line-of-sight product," Brown told Wireless Today.
Enabling non-line-of-sight operations eliminates much of the work service providers must do at
customers' homes or businesses, he added. That's because most customers can install their own
LMS3000 modems.
Installation by a customer saves service providers from spending $500 to $800 on a "truck roll," the
industry's term for dispatching crews to install services. "We've just stripped that right out of the
equation," Brown said.
WaveRider will charge service providers using its 900 MHz products between $750 and $1,000
per subscriber, he added. The company's broadband servers can handle between 300 and 1,000
modems, depending on the bandwidth.
WaveRider is right about broadband providers' interest in eliminating installation costs, said Le
Keough, a broadband market analyst with the Hoak Breedlove and Wesneski investmentfirm in
Dallas.
"Self-installation is the Holy Grail of all broadband, and that includes wireless services," Keough
said.
WaveRider's modems and servers work in unlicensed spectrum in the 902 MHz to 928 MHz
bands. Telecom services operating in unlicensed spectrum bands are designed to connect calls
despite interference from other services operating in the same bands.
WaveRider's new offering likely will be attractive to companies interested in rapidly building a
wireless broadband business, but those companies will face limits, Keough said. "I think sooner or
later, the unlicensed bands will get crowded because spectrum is scarce," he said.
WaveRider's 900 MHz technologies already are used by Platinum Communications in Alberta,
Canada. "Getting FCC approval means we can sell our equipment within the United States and in a
lot of other countries that use FCC approval as surrogate approval for their markets," Brown said.
Austin, Texas-based Broadjump also is deleting service providers' truck-roll costs, although its
technology isn't focused on non-line-of-sight access.
Sprint [FON] yesterday began deploying Broadjump's Virtual Truck software enabling wireless
broadband customers to install connections to the Sprint Broadband Direct wireless service. The
software instructs customers where to install their modems so the devices have line-of-sight
connections with service providers' antennas.
Sprint, which has been deploying Broadjump's software for its wireline cable services for nearly a
year, is the first wireless broadband operator to use the product.
Broadjump picked the right customer for its wireless debut, Keough said. "It makes sense they
would be able to adapt [Virtual Truck] to a wireless network," he said.
The Bottom Line
Non-line-of-sight capabilities will be an important step for wireless broadband providers, but those
companies are most concerned about offering self-installed services and cutting other costs for
adding customers to their networks, Keough said.
"If you can't solve the first two issues, nobody cares about non-line-of-sight," he said.
Non-line-of-sightwireless broadband service also comes with shorter service ranges than
line-of-sightsystems, which limits the number of customers reachable from a base station. Plus, just
as with other wireless broadband modems and servers, WaveRider's products won't work with
other companies' products.
"No service provider wants to be absolutely, positively stuck with one vendor," Keough said.
"They'd like to have multiple vendors so they can beat them up for prices." |
