NEW ORLEANS-A sense of urgency surrounded attendees of the Wireless Communications Association’s “Xtreme Wireless” conference in New Orleans last week as it became clear the marketplace is ready-but still waiting-for high-speed fixed wireless broadband service.
Keynote speaker and Sprint Corp.’s Broadband Wireless Group President Tim Sutton urged the wireless broadband community to get to market as soon as possible. Sutton noted the good news is about 50 million households will have no other way of getting broadband service except through fixed wireless.
“The bad news is we really don’t have a lot of customers … and we have a lot of players in the industry that never plan on launching a system,” Sutton said.
Doug Carter, chief technology officer for Nextlink Communications Inc., reinforced Sutton’s sentiments, saying the industry needs to use everything it has and use it now. Carter and others noted the conservative approach of the wireless broadband industry is giving other technologies such as digital subscriber line more opportunity to gain market share.
During the most controversial presentation of the three-day show, WorldCom Inc.’s President and Chief Executive Officer Bernard Ebbers openly criticized the Department of Justice for not allowing the merger between Sprint and WorldCom Inc. to go through.
“My personal conviction is that in spite of what they have done, the legacy of Janet Reno, Joel Klein and Bill Kennard will be the re-monopolization of local service for consumers,” said Ebbers.
Ebbers said the action will influence multichannel multipoint distribution service deployment, the spectrum for which WorldCom and Sprint own almost all of in the United States.
“The deployment of where it’s used will be affected,” Ebbers said, but did not elaborate further.
Even since March, when many of the attending companies convened in San Francisco for Shorecliff Communications Inc.’s World Wireless Forum, wireless broadband technology and its supporting players have been progressing rapidly.
Carriers such as Teligent Inc., Winstar Inc. and Advanced Radio Telecommunications Corp. are continuing to acquire more spectrum in the local multipoint distribution service frequency bands, and MMDS carriers Sprint and WorldCom said they plan to launch service in more markets in the following months.
Vendors also are moving ahead, although some conflict arose over who should be taking the lead when it comes to service deployment.
“We need a technology road map from the vendor community,” said Jonathan Mapes, CTO of WorldCom Wireless Solutions, during a session on global standards. Several vendor representatives expressed conflicting opinions, suggesting the carriers tell the vendors which standards and equipment they want, thus ending the guessing game and accelerating service deployments.
Overall, both carriers and vendors seemed eager and willing to cooperate on advancing wireless broadband technology and services, and several took a step toward solving the standards problem by forming a new consortium.
Six major communications and semiconductor companies, including ADC Telecommunications Inc., Conexant Systems Inc., Gigabit Wireless, Intel Corp., Nortel Networks and Vyyo Inc. announced they established the Wireless DSL Consortium.
The forum was established to define, develop and implement a set of open interfaces for broadband wireless access products operating in the MMDS (2.1 GHz and 2.5 GHz-2.7 GHz) and 3.5 GHz frequency bands, the companies said. The consortium also will provide testing and verification of standards-based products, offer advice on technical issues and act as a resource body.
“Open standards are a critical maturation step for widespread service deployment,” said WorldCom’s Mapes.
