Betting on U-NII

U-NII band has for the most part failed to capture the imaginations of ISPs looking for a way to break the broadband access logjam—but not DataCentric, 5.8 GHz is the place they want to be.

by Gerry Blackwell [May 17, 2001]

Despite some obvious benefits, the Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) band has for the most been ignored by ISPs looking for a way to break into telco-free broadband services. Most service providers remain focused on the overcrowded 2.4 GHz ISM band.

Too bad. As Texas-based DataCentric Communications Corp. is finding, the unlicensed 5.8 GHz U-NII band has great potential.

DataCentric, now a pure-play wireless communications services provider, is up and running in ten Tier-2 markets throughout Texas using network equipment from U-NII pioneer Adaptive Broadband Corp.

Preliminary challenges
The company started as a wireline ISP and ASP in 1998, but ran into familiar financial difficulties almost immediately.

"We had challenges in both those businesses," admits new CEO Gary Remy. "Quite frankly we were looking for ways to turn the company around and change directions because of the poor margins in the ISP and ASP businesses."

One of those obvious challenges, was finding a way to respond to rising customer demand for broadband access.

"We felt the same pain as other ISPs," says DataCentric co-founder David Herr, vice president of business development. "We did try getting involved with the DSL and cable modem market, but we just could not break into the central offices and the cable companies."

So in late 1999, Herr and partner Ronny Johnston, the company's vice president of engineering, started researching the wireless service segment seeking new revenue opportunities. Both are originally RF engineers by training.

"We researched quite a few companies," Herr says. "Adaptive Broadband was the only one with a really good product in the U-NII band."

While recent layoffs and restructuring at Adaptive caused concern, Remy says, Adaptive's commitment to re-focus on its U-NII products—and set aside ambitions to move into LMDS and MMDS—is ultimately a validation of DataCentric's U-NII strategy.

Besides, if the worst happened, there are other good suppliers, Herr points out. DataCentric decided upfront that U-NII was the way to go. The decision was based on a couple of considerations, Herr explains.

First, there was the problem of congestion—or potential congestion—in the 2.4 GHz ISM band. And then there was the superior cost-performance picture for U-NII.

"U-NII offers higher bits per hertz and bandwidth than ISM," Herr explains. "Adaptive equipment is all ATM. We get 25 Mbps off each access point. That's still twice as fast 802.11," the IEEE 2.4 GHz standard.

Airwave overload
But won't the U-NII band become just as congested eventually? DataCentric is confident this issue won't be a factor given its Tier-2 marketing strategy and the fact that the FCC has provided bandwidth within the U-NII band for both inside and outside applications.

It means ISPs like DataCentric at least won't have to worry about cordless phones and baby monitors interfering with their networks as ISM-band operators do.

Herr and Johnston and their partners developed a business plan around wireless. Last summer they established pilot systems in Conroe and Lufkin and spent the next several months learning the new technology and business.

"We wanted to spend quite a bit of time debugging the equipment," Herr says. "And we wrote some of our own software. We wanted to feel quite confident that we had a stable, carrier-class network."

Being able to build a network with that kind of reliability is what differentiates U-NII from ISM, he adds.

But as it turned out, it took some doing. The terrain around Conroe, near Houston, put the Adaptive U-NII technology to the test.

When asked what kinds of advice he could offer other ISPs following in DataCentric's footsteps, Herr deadpans, "Just be careful of trees."

"That's why we started in Conroe and Lufkin," he claims. "We knew if we could make it work here with our rolling topograhy and 90-foot pines, we could make it work anywhere."

DataCentric's engineers had to be "very creative," Herr says. He won't give much away, but says the company's success is based partly on the way it builds its antenna sites, partly on the custom software it wrote.

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