The market for broadband services is a large space, one that’s driven steady innovation, competition and various levels of service. While wireless carriers clamor to make technology roadmap choices for fourth-generation networks that will offer entirely mobile access, plenty of companies are finding success and steady growth on the fixed side of the equation.
Fixed wireless broadband meets mobile wireless broadband on many levels (they even sound similar), but the latter service type distinguishes itself by offering cellular-like services that will maintain quality of services at highway speeds, while the former focuses on delivering service to stationary customers that might want to fire up wireless Internet service downtown one day and across town (or in another city) the next.
Moreover, the lines of separation get even more blurred when fixed wireless broadband providers opt to use the same technology that their mobile counterparts are eyeing.
“We’ve been using straight-up fixed wireless since 2000 and just recently we started deploying some WiMAX gear,” said Dorian Banks, president and co-founder of MetroBridge Networks.
Around 95% of the fixed wireless provider’s network in a few parts of Canada and the United States is running non-WiMAX technology. “In the places where it’s appropriate . we’ll probably deploy WiMAX gear,” Banks said.
Need for speed
For example, WiMAX won’t work for customers looking for bandwidth in excess of 20 megabits per second, he said. The company has no plans to add a mobility component to its network. In fact, Banks sounds unconvinced about the mobility promise of WiMAX outright. “Mobility in WiMAX is still in its alpha infancy,” he said.
Other companies like Clearwire Corp., which offer fixed wireless broadband services on pre-WiMAX gear in some cases, have already made public their plans to add a mobility component.
“I assume we’re going to see a lot of people never going to mobile,” Banks said. MetroBridge sells service exclusively to businesses.
“It’s far more lucrative to sell a $1,000 connection rather than a $49 connection,” he said, flatly. Like many of its competitors, the company operates on unlicensed and licensed spectrum, depending on the customer’s need for capacity and speed.
“When someone needs a thousand-meg link, it’s worth a lot of money,” Banks said. “We have a bunch of those customers. I think we’re the largest deployer in North America of gigabit links.”
Undercutting wireline
Yet low-capacity customers are the company’s “bread and butter,” he said.
Banks said 99.9% of their customers are stolen from traditional telephone companies and that MetroBridge typically is able to offer comparable service at a price cut of 20% to 50%, and sometimes by as much as 80%.
“What’s most common right now is that I think people have outgrown T1 or ADSL . and there’s nothing to go to,” Banks said.
And while he admits some businesses may be taking tough hits during this economic recession, he expects his company to exploit the fact it can save businesses money by switching from traditional broadband operators.
Ready for tomorrow
Towerstream Corp., which offers fixed wireless broadband in many of the top markets in the country, plans to add a mobility component to its network, but more as a “future-proofing” measure and less as a move away from its fixed core.
“In our opinion everything is going to coexist nicely,” said Arthur Giftakis, VP of engineering and operations at Towerstream. “I think it’s going to be a combination of fixed, nomadic and true mobility.”
The company is already deploying 802.16e mobile WiMAX gear in some markets, which puts it ahead of Sprint Nextel Corp.’s delayed Xohm network launch, but it doesn’t plan to offer fully mobile services in the short term.
“We want to crawl before we walk, before we run,” Giftakis said. “There’s no reason why we can’t use that as a fixed asset . but we can build mobility on top of that.”
Towerstream doesn’t have any customers using 802.16e mobile WiMAX gear yet, but plans to get some customers on board for testing in the next couple weeks, he said.
“We think the majority of our opportunity will be the fixed market for maybe another year,” Giftakis said. “I don’t think the need for fixed is going to go away.”
Eventually, he expects about 40% of Towerstream’s customers to take advantage of the mobility overlay.
“I think mobility’s going to be a play, but I think all the technologies are going to coexist,” he said.
