WiMAX rolls ahead without Sprint Nextel: TDS, NextPhase boast of deployment plans

WiMAX has come to the college town of Madison, Wis., thanks to a new network launched today by TDS Telecommunications Corp. with infrastructure provided by Alvarion Ltd. And in other WiMAX-related news, NextPhase Wireless said it has received approval from the Federal Communications Commission to provide nationwide mobile WiMAX services in the 3.65 GHz band.
The news comes on the heels of a new report that concludes WiMAX still faces significant challenges in the United States.
As for TDS, the carrier’s network utilizes 2.5 GHz spectrum and will provide digital phone and broadband service to nearly 65,000 customers in the Madison area during the first stages of rollout, the company said. TDS is owned by the same company — Telephone and Data Systems Inc. — as regional cellphone carrier U.S. Cellular Corp.
“The transmission signal covers a two-mile distance around each of our seven towers and reaches roughly 55,000 residential and 10,000 business addresses in Madison,” said Lisa Cvengros, executive VP and CTO at TDS. The company said it’s also actively seeking to expand its coverage. Once fully deployed, the carrier’s licensed spectrum could cover a 35-mile radius around Madison, the company said.
TDS tapped Alvarion for base stations situated on the east and west ends of the city. TDS’ employees have been testing the network for the past 10 months.
The network is currently returning speeds of up to 6 megabits per second on the downlink and 3 Mbps on the uplink. The network is fixed, and therefore doesn’t support mobile services or handoffs between cell sites, but infrastructure vendor Alvarion said the network can be upgraded to the mobile WiMAX standard.
“For them it is about primary voice alongside the data,” said Patrick Leary, assistant VP of marketing at Alvarion. “Any customer that signs up for the service is able to get bundled primary voice and data.”
Alvarion has been working on the deployment for the better part of the past year, Leary said.
Separately, NextPhase Wireless, another WiMAX provider, is planning to roll out WiMAX services in the 3.65 GHz – 3.7 GHz band in a series of markets it holds spectrum in. The company just received approval from the Federal Communications Commission to provide wireless broadband services in the newly released band.
“Combined with the recently announced Local Multipoint Distribution Service spectrum that we’ve acquired in certain key markets (Atlanta; Los Angeles; Miami; Philadelphia; Wilmington, Del.; and Trenton, N.J.) we now have all of the elements in place to deliver a comprehensive portfolio of business-grade broadband speeds,” NextPhase President and CEO Robert Ford said.
The Anaheim, Calif.-based company says it plans to build a device-agnostic, mobile WiMAX-ready network serving all 48 contiguous states.
These moves come as a new report released today highlights the uncertainty still surrounding WiMAX.
“Sprint Nextel does not have sufficient leverage to build a nationwide WiMAX network without additional external funding. One first scenario is a spin-off of its WiMAX unit while retaining ownership of the spectrum. The second scenario is for Sprint to execute a slower build-out than previously announced with a more modest capex investment,” said Adlane Fellah, CEO of Maravedis and a contributor to the report.
“A third or complementary scenario is to use only part of the spectrum for WiMAX, leaving room for LTE,” added Robert Syputa, a senior analyst at the firm.
The firm concludes that LTE will be the dominant mobile broadband technology by 2012, with trials starting in 2010.