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Editor's Perspective
Fixed on a solution
By Dan O'Shea
April 22, 2003
After writing a story about the resurgence of the fixed wireless market for April 7 print edition of Telephony, I received a lot of feedback. Most of it was from PR people and various marketing types wondering why I hadn't mentioned their companies. Also, Winstar called to remind me they had actually survived bankruptcy and were still in business. Then, there was the pious reader who took offense to the story's headline, "The Second Coming of Fixed Wireless." Being timed just before Easter, I thought it was rather appropriate (my Catholic mother was just happy I nodded in God's direction).
In any case, the response helped prove to me what I was surprised to learn in researching the story--that fixed wireless is back, and an industry of network operators seems to be strongly considering it for broader deployment. Further verifying that possibility, Verizon recently was reported as mulling over a major deployment commitment.
You can blame of variety of issues for the near disappearance of fixed wireless from the U.S. market in recent years. Many people involved with the technology will say that it probably wasn't mature enough a few years ago, or that carriers hoping to build national networks were overly ambitious. Its resurgence now is being led by smaller wireless ISPs with more pragmatic plans and expectations.
However, bigger deployments with ILECs and other large carriers could, again, be just around the corner. But this time around, rather than building big networks, the carriers may be more focused on using fixed wireless as a broadband extension for increasingly successful DSL offerings. With DSL coverage beginning to grow to its natural reach limits, a fixed wireless extension may be key for DSL's next-generation success.
This will make fixed wireless not just another dreamy broadband option, but a real broadband solution.
E-mail me at doshea@primediabusiness.com.
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Top News
AirMagnet mobilizes WLAN management
By Dan O'Shea
April 21, 2003
Corporate enterprise wireless LAN solutions rapidly are evolving from dumb access points to intelligently managed infrastructures and even beyond, to tools and applications that make WLAN management an easier job--a fact that AirMagnet is attesting to this week.
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Earnings up, sales down at Motorola
By Toby Weber
April 16, 2003
Motorola's announced slightly disappointing results for the first quarter 2003, posting higher earnings but lower sales year-over year.
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Reporter's Notebook
Hopping into trouble
April 22, 2003
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Peter Michaels, CEO of Hop-On.com, a company that had claimed to be developing a disposable mobile phone product for the last few years, has been indicted for fraud. The executive allegedly used funds raised for a previous online casino venture for personal use, and later converted shares in the gambling venture to stock in Hop-On.
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Industry Update
Virgin collects 500,000 admirers, Terabeam gets ADC
April 21, 2003
Virgin Mobile USA reported this week that it has signed up 500,000 subscribers in the nine months since its July 2002 national launch.
The joint venture of Virgin Mobile and Sprint also stated that its users each send and receive an average of 25 text messages per month, and that Virgon Mobile users have so far downloaded more than 700,000 ring tones.
In other news from around the industry, ADC Telecommunications has approved Terabeam Corp.'s 60 GHz millimeter wave radio equipment for use with ADC's Digivance radio-over-fiber system in carrier deployments.
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Deal of the Week
Motorola, others invest in Dilithium
April, 22, 2003
Dilitium Networks, a developer of voice and video transcoding gateways for mobile networks, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from new investors Motorola Ventures and JAFCO Asia, as well as existing investors Ericsson Technology Fund, Deutsche Bank Capital Partners and CVM Capital. The money will help Dilithium expand its global sales efforts and support ongoing research and development, the company said.
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