Flying without wires

More customers are seeking a ‘mobile solution’ to complement fixed broadband in the office and iBurst is genuinely plug-and-play, he says.

But some customers have not received the throughput they expected and some do not really understand what it offers. "We don’t see iBurst as a mobile internet solution [per se], more as an extension of a customer’s LAN. For example, for fixed services in the office," he says.

Lovegrove says customers have been running VoIP across iBurst. VoIP can run over a softphone using iBurst but there is no QoS yet, he warns. "iBurst isn’t generally voice quality yet," he says. "But my understanding is you wouldn’t be running VoIP over [Unwired] either."

If the wireless broadband vendors can get past their proprietary offerings, wireless broadband may eventually be a real enabler.

Otherwise, there is some danger of a VHS-versus-Beta type scrap in the industry. ‘There’s a clear standard for Wi-Fi and that has some rapid uptake in laptops that are Wi-Fi-enabled. But for WAN, there is not. People don’t want to buy equipment based on that,’ Lovegrove points out.

Lovegrove thinks wireless broadband might follow a path similar to that taken by mobile phone providers in the mid 1990s. In 1995, Australia had five or six mobile phone networks and that proved unsustainable. Consolidation occurred, and the same could happen in wireless broadband, he suggests.

PBA did a good job getting iBurst up and running in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra, and then Commander stepped in and bought the company. That could be a hint of things to come, Lovegrove says.

Unfortunately, Commander had not responded to CRN’s requests for interview by press-time. Lovegrove says no-one is sure what is going to happen now Commander is running the PBA show. "The message has been that it will be business as usual but Commander is a direct competitor of ours and with most iBurst service providers," he says.

D-Link's Reardon: VAR program shortly

Graeme Reardon, Australasian regional manager at networking vendor Linksys, will not provide figures for its wireless broadband sales, but says 802.11g-compatible items, access points, routers, PCI and USB products are selling well.

Linksys is seeing traction with its ‘Super-G’ range that can cope with up to 108Mb/s under the right circumstances, and with its new SRX Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) products. MIMO is advertised as ‘intelligent antennae technology’ offering faster wireless speeds over a wider area than standard Wi-Fi gear. "We are starting to work with resellers and will be introducing a VAR program shortly," Reardon says. "And we will be releasing an SMB range over the next few months."

Linksys is also pushing new products it says can assist the integration of voice with wireless. One is a wireless router with built-in VoIP ports, made for broadband provider engin that can be used to adapt analogue telephony to a wireless IP-based setup, he says.

"We’re interested in forming relationships with ISPs who can deliver [appropriate SKUs]," Reardon says.

Ravi Bhatia, chairman of Access Providers, says his wireless ISP has been very quiet until now but is boosting its marketing, going national and developing its channel.

"The full service network has been going for a couple of years. It has proven to be extremely stable and shown high performance in terms of availability, excellent latency, low packet loss and so on," he says.

Access Providers is using the current version of 802.16 and the next version will require a software upgrade. It has a simple network topology, using base stations every 10 or 12 kilometres referring back to a central lock. Melbourne has about 13 Access Providers base stations.

Bhatia has not surveyed Access Providers’ voice capability but says there is no technical reason why one should not go down that path. "Pundits think that [the market] may grow from 200 to 300 percent over the next 12 months. And real growth, pundits think, will come once the WiMAX standard is interoperability-certified, for the simple reason that there will be a steep drop in price," he says.

He reckons the market may have to consolidate a lot. Managing cash flow is going to be critical for some players, and the companies with the right skill sets will go and buy others. Access Providers has made no secret of its own acquisitive tendencies, it might be added. "Right now, there are quite a few very small companies doing things with wireless," Bhatia says.

Access Providers has about a dozen partners and may sign more but be selective, forming relationships with partners developing specifi c wireless broadband applications, for example. "Eventually, the wires are going to run out in many cases. No new copper is being laid and the quality of copper is going to decline," Bhatia points out.

"Over the next five years or so, wireless broadband will really come into its own. And it’s independent of Telstra, so my costs are not controlled by the ACCC and Telstra."