Wi-Fi News Briefs

• Fresh Breeze From Israel
• Licensed to Fail?
• Other News From Salt Lake City
• Restating What's Obvious

by Gerry Blackwell [March 5, 2002]

Fresh Breeze From Israel
Alvarion Ltd., the fixed wireless network equipment vendor formed from the merger of Breezecom and Floware, has announced the commercial launch of its AlvariBase product, which it describes as an all-in-one broadband wireless access (BWA) base station solution.

Good news, except the system for now only operates in the 3.5 GHz frequency range, a much licensed band in Europe and elsewhere, but little used as yet in North America.

In the past, Alvarion says, BWA base stations could not efficiently support both TDM and packet infrastructure. This made it too expensive for operators to simultaneously address communications needs of both corporations and residential/SOHO customers.

The AlvariBase system supports a comprehensive range of TDM, packet-voice, and advanced managed data services. It supports the always-on Internet access, VPNs and Voice Over IP demanded by residential/SOHO customers, as well as the leased lines and PBX connectivity demanded by Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs).

This gives operators a new level of flexibility as they plan their marketing and service strategies, Alvarion says.

"Our new AlvariBase system changes the rules of the BWA marketplace," says Alvarion CEO Zvi Slonimsky. "By incorporating all BWA services into a single infrastructure, we enable operators to cost-effectively widen their target market, application and service offerings.

"This allows them to increase revenues without significantly increasing capital or operational expenses, making it easier for them to become profitable."

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Licensed to Fail?
Major players in the licensed fixed wireless market, both equipment vendors and service providers, continue to sing the blues.

According to an unconfirmed report from BusinessWeek Online, Reston, Virginia-based CLEC and LMDS service provider XO Communications Inc., is about to file for Chapter 11 protection.

And in the course of reporting mediocre financial results for fiscal 2001, San Jose-based MMDS equipment provider Hybrid Networks Inc., sounded a warning about depressed revenues for the remainder of 2002.

XO is reported to be considering the Chapter 11 move as a way of forcing debt holders to agree to a restructuring proposal. The proposal would give Forstmann Little and Telefonos de Mexico 80 percent of XO's equity in exchange for $400 million from each company.

According to the BusinessWeek article, the deal would also give two percent equity to XO management and 18 percent to remaining debt holders.

Hybrid, meanwhile, reported net sales for the fourth quarter of $7.6 million, compared with $12.9 million for the same period a year ago. The company did reduce its quarterly net loss year over year, from $5.6 million to $347,000.

sales for the 12-month period actually rose, from $22.8 million in 2000 to $27.9 million in 2001. And the Company reduced its net loss year over year from $37.2 million to approximately $10.7 million. This passes for good news in the troubled fixed wireless sector.

"We faced a number of challenges in 2001, including a slowing domestic economy, weakening telecommunications industry, and dramatically reduced demand for the Company's products by our key customers as a result of their revised business strategies," says Hybrid president and CEO Michael Greenbaum.

"Nonetheless, we were able to increase our year-over-year annual revenues and decrease our net losses."

Greenbaum adds that, "During 2001, the Company refocused its targeted opportunities to the international marketplace as we adjusted to the abrupt downturn in the domestic markets, in particular Sprint Corporation's and certain other domestic operator's decisions to cease the expansion of their deployments.

"Unfortunately, international opportunities did not develop as rapidly as we had anticipated, and we believe that domestic and international revenues will be depressed for substantially all of 2002. As a result, we do not foresee sufficient revenues to meet our operating expenses."

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Other News From Salt Lake City
Service providers, meanwhile, continue to enter the market using license free infrastructure.

Equipment vendor Luxul Corp. of Salt Lake City announced recently it had successfully completed build-out of a system in the cities of Norman and Durant OK for Oklahoma Municipal Services Corp. (OMSC), a WISP operated by the Oklahoma Municipal League.

The networks use Luxul's LUXcomm 2.4GHz 802.11b infrastructure product. Luxul says it was contracted to design and implement a wireless network system covering an area of 45 square miles in Norman and 30 square miles in Durant.

OMSC provides a suite of broadband services including voice over IP, video conferencing and high speed Internet connectivity. OMSC will own and operate the wireless system providing access to residences and businesses in the two cities.

"For quite some time, we had been looking for a cost effective and affordable solution to offer wireless data communication and broadband Internet to residential, commercial and municipal customers," says OMSC executive director Danny George

"The LUXcomm system is the ideal solution to fill our needs. We are excited to move forward with future build-outs utilizing Luxul's products."

Luxul President and Chief Executive Officer Cory Yeates says the LUXcomm product has helped the company make significant inroads in the municipal market.

"We feel that this product, coupled with our next generation products, will give us the opportunity to not only build out here in the United States, but will give us an extremely competitive product internationally," Yeates says.

The OMSC implementation is one of several by Luxul in the past 18 months. Other Luxul wireless networks are already up and running in North Salt Lake City and Clearfield City, UT; Fresno, CA; Frisco and New Braunfels, TX; and Nassau, Bahamas. The LUXcomm systems are used to provide Internet access services for subscribers, to feed cellular networks, for campus environments, for building-to-building connectivity and for wireless local area networks (WLANs).

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Restating What's Obvious
A recent report from the Yankee Group's Consumer Market Convergence research and consulting practice finds that unlicensed fixed wireless technologies continue to bridge the gap between broadband availability in urban and rural markets.

An increasing number of wireless ISPs (WISPs) are deploying broadband access to both single-family homes and verticals such as multiple-dwelling units (MDUs) using the 2.4-GHz band, the report notes.

"The biggest driver behind interest in unlicensed bands remains their ability to offer low-cost market entry into the consumer broadband access arena," says Yankee Group senior analyst Imran Khan, the author of the report.

"The 'mobile computing' functionality (the ability to connect to the Internet from outside the home and in restaurants, hotels, etc.) of wireless LANs will draw more consumers toward subscription and usage of wireless broadband access."

The report; Unlicensed Fixed Wireless: Setting the Stage for Greater Broadband Availability? provides an analysis of the various unlicensed wireless bands and profiles activities of selected WISPs serving the residential markets.

It also performs a comparison of fixed wireless technologies with existing cable modem and digital subscriber line (DSL) broadband platforms in terms of network infrastructure deployment issues.

Overall, the scaling back of broadband deployment activities on the part of the RBOCs and the reluctance of cable operators to move into rural markets create opportunities for WISPs to target these segments and gain a first-mover advantage, the report says.

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Related articles:
	[Dec. 20, 2001]	Luxul Comes Out With Partial NLOS Solution
	[Dec. 3, 2001]	XO Gets $800 Million
	[Nov. 27, 2001]	Treading Water With BeyonDSL