I'll believe it when I see it—that is, a third broadband option to cable and DSL. It could be the fiber to the home (FFTH) via passive optical networks (PONs), as I reported several months ago. But a broadband option that may wind up winning third place is the newest wireless metropolitan-area networking (MAN or metro) technology known as broadband wireless access (BWA).
It's my guess that if the entrenched broadband carriers are going to get some big-time competition, the time is now. Not only do U.S. broadband Internet access customers pay more than most other subscribers in high-tech countries, the U.S. also seriously lags in the rollout of broadband to the population.
The cable and telecom carriers have successfully maintained their monopolies. While providing fast access to millions, they've stifled competition, kept prices high, and left a huge segment of the population in the dark without high-speed broadband access. After all, business is business. With the recent approval of the new IEEE standard for BWA, that's about to be corrected. The hope is that we're on the threshold of a broadband revolution.
When you stop to consider the entire wireless landscape, you see personal-area networks (PANs) such as Bluetooth, ZigBee, UHF ISM radios, and ultra-wideband (UWB) solving short-range needs. There are also wireless local-area networks (Wi-Fi WLANs) serving the enterprise, home, and hot-spot markets for medium-range access, as well as wide-area networks (WANs) provided by our cell-phone carriers with their worldwide connections.
But there are no wireless MANs. Numerous wired MANs exist, of course, either for cable-TV systems or fiber-optic networks aimed at metro service (such as linking LANs together and connecting LANs to WANs). Forthcoming PONs are the ultimate fast MAN. But such systems, despite their steadily declining costs, remain expensive because you have to dig holes or mount cable on poles, which takes time and money.
Wireless clearly answers these problems. But until recently, no one agreed-upon standard was out there. That's all changed with the IEEE's recently approved 802.16 WMAN standard, which is finally ready. Chip and equipment companies are racing to get in on this potentially lucrative new market.
THE STANDARD MAKES THE DAY
Fixed wireless broadband isn't really new. Jim Kraemer, Smart Modular Technologies' director of product development and engineering, says he worked with this fast wireless technology in the military during the 1980s and 1990s. The telecom industry has used micro-wave for many years in back-haul applications. And, the technology has found homes in satellite data transmissions for decades now.
During the past 10 years or so, efforts to commercialize this technology led to the multichannel-multipoint-distribution-service (MMDS) and local-multipoint-distribution-service (LMDS) microwave systems. Today, these services are at a virtual dead end. These more recent efforts failed because of three key reasons.
First, they were extremely expensive. That's usually the case with microwave equipment. However, thanks to the development of Wi-Fi WLANs, semiconductor processing is at a point where the manufacture of microwave radio chips has become commonplace. Thus, the cost of producing microwave radios has dropped significantly.
Another part of the failure had to do with the lack of a single standard. All of the systems had their own proprietary designs. If you adopted the technology, you clearly had to stick with one vendor. Interoperability between different systems wasn't even considered.
Third, reliable connections can only be established by full line-of-sight (LOS) links at the higher microwave frequencies. This means gain antennas on high towers and clear paths with no trees, buildings, or other obstructions. This was difficult to achieve in some applications. But now, those problems have mostly been solved with the 802.16 standard.
Adopted by the IEEE in 1999, 802.16 originally focused only on operation in the 11- to 66-GHz band. Realizing that a reliable broadband service could only be achieved at the lower frequencies, companies went back to the drawing boards to create options to the standard that could produce a wireless winner. This led to the 802.16a amendment, which included a new standard option for the 2- to 11-GHz range. That extension has been rolled into the full 802.16 2004 standard and is now the focus of most of the attention in BWA.
Better still has been the creation of the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) Forum, an organization of over 150 chip companies, equipment manufacturers, and carriers. The group was formed to promote broadband wireless and create interoperability testing and certification to ensure that all chips and equipment work together compatibly.
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