Broadband Fixed Wireless Worth $28.5Bil By '07 - Study
By Michael Bartlett, Newsbytes
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.
27 Mar 2001, 4:55 PM CST
The burgeoning demand for high-speed Internet access will send the value of the broadband fixed wireless access service market rocketing past $28.5 billion by 2007, according to a new study.
A report by marketing and consulting company Frost & Sullivan said the broadband fixed wireless market brought in $842.3 million in revenue in 2000. Business customers generated more than 99 percent of that figure.
According to Michelle Gao, a Frost & Sullivan analyst who specializes in Internet access, a service provider sends a wireless signal from its base station to a transceiver on the top of the customer's roof. From there, the end user connects the transceiver to outlets inside the building. "Fixed wireless is different than a wireless LAN (local area network)," she said. "People inside the office building must plug their laptops in, they cannot carry them from room to room.
Gao said the flexibility of the wireless signal offers advantages over the wire-line competition.
"Broadband fixed wireless is a very good technology," she said. "It is much faster and has much more potential than cable modems or DSL (digital subscriber line). Fixed-fiber optics is the only transmission method that offers more bandwidth than fixed wireless.
The disadvantage of fixed fiber-optics," Gao said, is that it is labor-intensive and expensive to install. "Depending on how far a building is from the service provider, it can take months to lay fiber optic cable," Gao said. "A fixed wireless system can be set up in 48 hours."
The expansion of broadband fixed wireless may be limited by access to rooftop space and problems with "line of sight" issues. Gao said the transceiver must be on top of a building, because trees and other objects can block the signal. She said the industry is working on technology that will capture signals as they bounce off buildings, but these fixes are still in the developmental stage.
"Obtaining access to the roof of a building is critical. If there are too many transceivers on top of a building, it causes interference. The first company in an office building to sign up for fixed wireless service has a competitive advantage," she said.
Some companies are installing residential broadband fixed wireless access, but these efforts have been slowed by the prohibitive cost of equipment. According to Gao, this cost may reach from $500 to $1,000 per customer.
"It is not economical for Internet service providers to go into residential in most cases," she said. "Sprint and WorldCom are doing some residential high-speed fixed wireless, but the cost of equipment needs to come down to about $100 to $150 for residential use to really explode."
More information on Frost & Sullivan is available on the Web at frost.com~.
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16:55 CST
Reposted 17:47 CST
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