The Broadband Wireless market is to develop from a $1bn market in 1996 to $15bn by 2005, according to a report by industry consultants Ovum. Broadband Wireless, sometimes referred to as Local Multipoint Distribution Services, is a set of technologies for transferring large quantities of information over fixed wireless networks. It contrasts with the narrowband wireless technologies such CDMA and GSM, and other analog radio local loop technologies, which only offer between a paltry 9.6Kbps and 32Kbps of data transfer on each channel. On the other hand, Wireless Broadband offers Gigabits of information per second. As the technology is wireless, there is no capital cost for the laying of cabling, such as co-axial cable or optic fiber. Instead the same bandwidth services can be delivered for a third of the cost. Broadband wireless has been used for the transmission of television signals in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and in the US as wireless Cable, the real killer application for broadband wireless is going to be in high speed two-way data which is what the Brooklyn, New York-based company Cellularvision is attempting with its 28 GHz analog LMDS service (CI No 3,208). The Federal Communications Commission plans for a LMDS frequency auction in November, which one FCC official reportedly described as the Grand-daddy of the Personal Communications Services auctions. Ovum senior analyst Pauline Trotter is more skeptical than this and instead believes that the immaturity of the technology, and the FCC’s exclusion of the cable and telco operators will lead to the auctions either being disappointing, or having to be postponed. Within the next two years it reckons the LMDS technology is going to take off, with Alcatel-Alsthom SA, Phillips Electronics Co, GEC-Marconi, Bosch Telecom, and Hewlett- Packard Co, as the early telco equipment suppliers that are developing the necessary hardware. The end result will apparently be a new class of communications operator, which can supply high speed data, voice, video and TV. The initial high cost of digital receiver equipment will initially restrict the take-up, which will, at first, be restricted to small and medium-sized business users. But the cost savings inherent in operating wireless services will cause the industry to grow rapidly.
