News of interest. Wonder who these two of top 10 carriers are?
Thanks to all for the good info.
Dub
Thursday January 14, 3:31 pm Eastern Time
Company Press Release
California Microwave's Internet-Optimized High-Speed Wireless Broadband Access System Moves to Field Trial Phase With Two Top-10 U.S. Telecom Carriers
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 14, 1999--California Microwave, Inc. (Nasdaq/NMS:CMIC - news) announced today that it has signed contracts with two top-10 U.S. telephone carriers for the supply of its point-to-multipoint wireless broadband network access product, AB-Access™.
Under the contracts, the carriers will field-trial the AB-Access equipment using a variety of real-life applications. These trials follow tests conducted by Cambridge University, the University of Kansas, and others where AB-Access successfully demonstrated simultaneous video conferencing, full-motion streaming video and high-speed connection to the Internet over a single connection, at speeds 15 times faster than wireline networks.
AB-Access is a packet-based system, the optimal technology for handling high-speed data, such as Internet traffic. The ''packet-on-demand'' aspect of the AB-Access system offers higher data speeds (up to 25 mbps) and superior bandwidth management than competitive alternatives due to its highly granular handling of data. Tightly packing data is key to telecommunications providers because bandwidth is such a scarce resource.
Adaptive Broadband: 15 Times Faster than a Wired T1
These field trials mark the first orders in support of major U.S. telecommunications carriers for Adaptive's new point-to-multipoint system, which provides ''last-mile'' wireless broadband connections to corporations, businesses and homes.
Commenting on the news, Dr. Daniel L. Scharre, California Microwave's Chief Technology Officer and Chief Executive Officer of the company's Adaptive Broadband™ Limited subsidiary, said: ''We are excited by these well-known carriers' interest and look forward to their evaluation of AB-Access products. We believe that AB-Access is the world's only point-to-multipoint, packet-on-demand system available today.
''With a plethora of wireless network product announcements made almost daily, we are the only supplier to actually deliver this unique, leading-edge network technology that will lower our customers' equipment cost while providing Internet and multimedia access that is over 15 times faster than a T1 wired line. These initial two field trials are in preparation for our pilot launch expected this April.''
Use of the U-NII Band is Attractive to Telecommunications Providers
Adaptive's first release of AB-Access is for applications that use the 5 GHz ''Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure'' (U-NII) frequency band. Because of its unlicensed nature, there is no cost to operate within this band, and not having to seek licensing from the FCC greatly improves time-to-market.
Additionally, providers can choose to target selected geographic areas in which to offer service or roll-out an entire network nationwide. The product design can be easily modified for other frequencies. Future releases will support wireless infrastructure deployments worldwide using frequencies up to 42 GHz. According to a market research report by Pioneer Consulting, the market for local multipoint data services will grow to $6.5 billion by 2007.
Packet-on-Demand Minimizes Equipment Cost and Efficiently Allocates Bandwidth
The key to enabling broadband access to a large number of users using wireless technologies is efficiently utilizing available frequency spectrum and minimizing the hardware cost per user. Today, wireless technologies are widely used for circuit-based, high-bandwidth, point-to-point connections to individual locations.
These connections make sense when a consistent, high capacity connection is required, but can be prohibitively expensive for applications that require only occasional high capacity. For example, Internet users tend to have ''bursty,'' or intermittent traffic demands, and having a dedicated channel or a point-to-point wireless link results in substantial unused capacity during periods when data is not being transmitted.
To solve the problem of unused capacity, dedicated circuit-based connections must be replaced with on-demand, packet-based connections that enable users to consume only as much system bandwidth as is required at any given time. Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) technology can be used to enable several users to share a single channel on a point-to-multipoint basis, which efficiently allocates bandwidth to end-users and minimizes the hardware costs involved.
While TDMA capability is necessary, it is not sufficient for cost-effective delivery of bursty traffic. The system must also have the capability to intelligently handle Internet Protocol (IP) packets and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) cells on a packet-by-packet or cell-by-cell basis, as provided by the AB-Access solution.
AB-Access Increases Available Bandwidth Ten-fold
AB-Access is a patent-pending, point-to-multipoint, packet-on-demand technology that allows network users to simultaneously share the available frequency spectrum using the most efficient bandwidth management system available today. Further, it is estimated that typical Internet connections use the maximum available capacity 10% of the time, at best.
The packet-on-demand approach of AB-Access enables support of more than ten times as many users as existing circuit-based access techniques due to its capability of interleaving many different users within a single channel and providing bandwidth, on a packet-by-packet basis, only as needed. This capability also facilitates charging end users only for the service they require, thereby reducing the cost of service offered with the product.
First U.S. Public Live Demonstration at CTIA Show
The AB-Access wireless capability will be demonstrated live at the CTIA show in New Orleans, Feb. 8-10, in booth No. 3633. The demonstration will include simultaneous video conferencing, full-motion video and high-speed connection to the Internet over a single connection, at speeds faster than wireline networks.
California Microwave, Inc. (http://www.calmike.com) is a leading U.S. supplier of satellite earth station and microwave radio infrastructure products and information and collection systems. Its focus is on transmission of high-speed data, especially for Internet traffic, via satellite and terrestrial wireless communications. For more information on AB-Access visit the Adaptive Broadband subsidiary web site (http://www.adaptivebroadband.com).
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