Lasers, Broadband Wireless Hookups
Speed Data Around Lower Manhattan
By DENNIS K. BERMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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Mike Brady doesn't know what to make of the two humming contraptions now peering through windows at Merrill Lynch & Co. offices near the Hudson River in New York City. "They look like searchlights on small refrigerators," jokes Mr. Brady, Merrill's first vice president for global network services.
In reality, the devices are a part of a system of invisible lasers transmitting data for over 2,000 people from two Merrill operations in lower Manhattan to backup offices in Jersey City, N.J., about 1.6 miles away and across the Hudson.
Three weeks ago it would have been unimaginable for Merrill to so quickly deploy the technology, called "free-space optics," without months of testing and fiddling. But with its own ring of traditional fiber-optic cables damaged in the destruction of the World Trade Center, it had little choice but to scramble for an alternative. Since Sept. 11, says Mr. Brady, the fiber-optic lines buried beneath the pavement have failed five times. Now, when the fiber goes out, the lasers from Seattle's Terabeam Inc. kick in. (Merrill has a small investment in Terabeam, but hadn't before used its technology.)
Prior to the terrorist attacks, the business world seemed mostly to ignore such wireless technologies -- once billed by their promoters as great liberators of the Internet Age because they zap gobs of information through the air instead of relying on often-sluggish phone lines. Free-space optics such as Terabeam's system use lasers and receiving stations to transmit data relatively small distances, while another technology, broadband wireless service, uses radio waves. One of the leading proponents of the latter technology is Winstar Communications Inc., now in bankruptcy protection.
The knocks on both technologies were similar: too unreliable, too new, and too different. But with Verizon Communications Inc. still struggling to restore telecom service in lower Manhattan, tapping into thin air is the only way for many disrupted companies to reliably restore their critical links. And that's injecting fresh life into technologies and companies once thought to have evaporated with the Internet bubble.
Disaster recovery "is not something we envisioned," says Dan Hesse, Terabeam's chief executive. But, he says, "It certainly has made a number of companies willing to take a step they would not have otherwise."
At the U.S. District Court offices just six blocks from the World Trade Center ruins, District Executive Cliff Kirsch found the fiber lines "knocked out completely" for nearly 12 days. He bought 100 cellphones as a stopgap. But that was of little help for the more than 900 employees still without voice and Internet service. The court eventually found Winstar, which last weekend installed its equipment on the courthouse roof, immediately restoring the connections.
Winstar, New York, says it has received over 100 orders related to the Sept. 11 attacks, including new service for the U.S. Marshals Service and Citigroup. William Rouhana, Winstar's chief executive, admits that some had reservations about trusting their communications to a company in Chapter 11. But, he says, "The choice right now is zero service or give us a shot."
The dilemma was much the same far from the attack site at the midtown headquarters of Mayer, Brown & Platt. After the attacks, the law firm opened its doors to employees of displaced clients, many of them investment banks. Over 400 people crowded in, overwhelming the phone service.
Reeling from damage to a key switching office, Verizon told the firm it would be at least three weeks before more capacity could be installed. Mayer turned to Rockefeller Group Telecommunications Services Inc., which uses a technology similar to Terabeam's from LightPointe Communications Inc. Now, expanded voice capacity travels on a laser coming from a 23rd-floor window, connecting at a nearly 45-degree angle to a receiving unit atop the 53-story McGraw-Hill Building about two and a half blocks south. There, the traffic jumps onto the traditional phone network.
Quick installation has always been a selling point for such free-space optics, helped by the fact that the Federal Communications Commission doesn't regulate the spectrum, or airwaves, the technology uses. It took just one weekend for Mayer to get its connection running. Merrill had its first link up in nine days as Terabeam engineers transported equipment via the luggage compartments of buses, the only way into Ground Zero.
The new systems aren't foolproof. Winstar's can be weakened by heavy rain. Both Terabeam and LightPointe say only the heaviest of fog scrambles their signals. Distance and line-of-sight problems can, however, affect signal quality. When Terabeam installed its lasers across the Hudson, it had to make sure a new building in Jersey City would not rise high enough to block the laser's path. And the distance of the link, over 1.6 miles, is longer than optimal, which means it is running at about 99% reliability instead of the promised 99.9%.
Such concerns have dogged the free-space technology since its inception some 30 years ago, when, ironically, it got one of its first trials as a link between the two towers of the World Trade Center, says Richard Cunningham, senior optical networking analyst with Cahners In-Stat Group.
Winstar's Mr. Rouhana says the disaster demonstrates that alternatives to the giant Bell companies are as necessary for public safety as for consumer choice. Bell competition has weakened this year along with the economy. "A chunk of the U.S. government and very large companies would have no communications services if this bankrupt competitor weren't up," he says.
Yet such disaster-recovery business may not be enough to ensure a secure future for these companies. "Will it help them? Yes," says Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown analyst Gary Jacobi. "But they built the businesses as if they were going to get all the access lines, not just a backup piece."
Write to Dennis K. Berman at dennis.berman@wsj.com |
