Wireless local loop continues to make a strong showing in its “classic” form in various parts of the world, particularly in India and South America, but in the United States, WLL is limited to small pockets of rural areas where the distance to the proverbial curb could be tens of miles, making installing a wireline technology costly and time consuming.
It has morphed from this traditional narrowband form into what most now call wireless broadband or fixed wireless, the lines gradually blurred as data services took on voice capabilities and vice versa. But however it is referred to, out of necessity, WLL is growing and changing with the times.
“I guess you could say it’s in hibernation for the winter,” said Larry Swasey, president of Allied Business Intelligence. “Once 3G becomes prevalent and these base stations have greater voice capacity, there’s no reason that these carriers won’t start selling these mobile air interfaces … to the local fixed market.”
The advent of third-generation technology has many implications for the entire wireless industry, but for WLL service, it means customers will have access to greater data capacity than ever before, making it an attractive alternative not only for customers to use, but for carriers to offer. Peter Waldo, senior director of global sales for WLL equipment provider Axesstel, said current data rates on WLL systems are at 64 kilobits per second, but with third-generation technology, data rates could jump as high as 144 kbps per subscriber.
“It’s a technology that’s waiting for the price to come down and the carriers to get back into it,” Swasey said.
Indeed, price is a major consideration for competitive local exchange and wireless carriers thinking about offering WLL-type services on a widespread basis. According to Swasey, $500 per subscriber is the magic number much of the world is waiting to see. Cost-per-subscriber will reach that point as demand for WLL services increases and equipment can be manufactured in greater quantities, which should occur during the next four or five years.
The CDMA Development Group monitors WLL activity all around the world, and it notes that in places like China, price is basically the only reason WLL is not used more.
“It’s really going to come down to the cost … How much will it be to get high data rate access to certain subscribers? What we’re constantly finding is it’s a race to deliver high data rates to subscribers in rural markets at the lowest price possible,” said Terry Yen, director of Asia-Pacific projects for the CDG.
“The cost per subscriber for both infrastructure and terminal equipment keeps dropping however, at a much faster rate than we expected,” Yen noted.
Despite its sparse coverage, Axesstel’s Waldo said WLL is still alive and well in some regions of the United States, and small carriers such as Nebraska Wireless and the Farmers Mutual Telephone Corp. offer it extensively in areas in the Midwest. Others such as Midwest Wireless Corp. stopped offering it, and former WLL provider Frontier Cellular in New York has gone out of business.
Demand for the service still exists, Waldo said. For Nebraska Wireless and FMTC, it’s cheaper to install and much less effected by the elements.
For the rest of the United States, LMDS and MMDS technologies are taking the lead in bringing voice and data service to those not included or interested in wireline services. Swasey said that the LMDS and MMDS service available today is just beginning its rise to consumer and business acceptance; many carriers are still beta testing services and waiting for the economy to recover so they can build out their networks.
“There’s just piecemeal applications now … What they’re (carriers) really trying to do is plant the seeds for better applications,” said Swasey.
Waldo also noted there are nontraditional uses for WLL, including pay phones and remote meter reading. The WLL market could easily branch into these areas as voice and data services are scooped up by wireless broadband and satellite providers in rural locations.
