Buoyed by its high speed, GigaBeam Corp.’s Virtual Fiber solution offers an alternative to fiber for last mile, local loop, central office bypass, local area network, metropolitan area network and wide area network customers.
The point-to-point wireless solution has advantages in cost and time of installation. “It allows multi-gigabits of communication, which is the same as fiber,” explained Louis Slaughter, chief executive officer of GigaBeam. “It allows lots of data on lots of frequencies.”
Indeed,GigaBeam already provides significant Wi-Fi zone coverage in Manhattan, including Central Park South. The company said it recently signed a contract with Microwave Satellite Technologies Inc. to provide high-speed connectivity of 1 Gigabit per second from a fiber node at the Trump International Hotel to various properties on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The company said 1 Gigabit per second is the equivalent of 647 T1 lines or 1,000 DSL connections. Slaughter said his technology scales the peculiar obstacles evidenced in many New York City locations where facilities are separated by buildings, streets and other right-of-way features that hold back connections using physical fiber.
MST’s services are offered as NuVisions Broadband, and include wired and wireless data, video and voice to multinational corporations, commercial properties and multifamily residences throughout the United States. Slaughter said MST will provide 177 TV channels, gaming and high-speed data.
“GigaBeam’s virtual fiber will enable NuVisions to deliver advanced new services to Trump rental and condominium properties on the Upper West Side of Manhattan,” said Frank Matarazzo, president and founder of MST.
“We are excited about GigaBeam’s breakthrough technology because it solves our biggest problem-high-speed, last-mile access,” said Matarazzo. “Previous last-mile solutions did not have the capacity and were not cost-effective.”
GigaBeam lists four dilemmas carriers face with fiber: not being able to get fiber; not being able to afford fiber; not being able to wait for fiber; and wanting redundant fiber-speed access.
Fiber can take months or even more than a year to install, but virtual fiber takes just a couple of hours, Slaughter said. The technology already is seen as a backup to fiber and a replacement where fiber lines have not yet been installed.
Slaughter formed GigaBeam earlier this year, after the Federal Communications Commission in late 2003 authorized 13,000 megahertz of spectrum in the 70, 80 and 90 GHz bands to be opened for commercial use. The FCC allows point-to-point licenses in the band using very narrow beams that allow unlimited links in any geographic area.
GigaBeam expects to deploy products next year capable of 10 Gigabits per second that conforms to the 10-Gigabit Ethernet protocol standard. Its current speed is 1.25 Gbps.
Slaughter said incumbent local exchange carriers as well as the competitive local exchange carriers use fiber, although they have limited deployments, so they seek virtual fiber as “the final solution to last mile.”
The technology also complements the various strains of WiMAX, including point-to-point, roaming and in-building technologies. Virtual fiber is also suited well for disaster recovery efforts, targeting enterprises and financial institutions as well as homeland security. Fiber usually goes through the same conduit, so if access collapses, finding an alternative is difficult, he explained. The same situation happened during Sept. 11 when the network broke down.
“The fiber setup is limited or doesn’t have alternative access to buildings,” he said describing the weakness of traditional fiber.
