Wireless broadband bar lowered for infrastructure
providers.
Wireless distributor Integrity Data Systems (IDS)
has signed up to push wireless radios that its CEO believes
could rattle a few cages, heralding a new ISP rush to
infrastructure purchases.
Ross Chiswell, CEO at the Adelaide-based niche
distributor, said a new Wavelink wireless broadband radio --
made by US-based Aeras Networks -- was offering true full duplex
bandwidth at 45Mb/s and a price point that could encourage ISPs
to re-enter the race to invest in infrastructure.
"It could be an integrated product or an external
antenna -- all the elements and the antennae are in one package
-- none of [the others] have the option of the external
antennae, which sometimes you need if you need to put it up a
pole," he said. "[Also] I've never seen a five-year warranty in
an outdoor product."
Many products offered combinations of the same
features, but not fully transmitting both ways at 45Mb/s and not
all together for that price, he said.
"This is going to stimulate infrastructure build
again, because ISPs haven't been able to get the money to
deliver the infrastructure. If you can have the pipe, that
allows them to put in a whole lot of infrastructure on the end
to deliver services," Chiswell said.
He said voice applications -- especially if
harnessing VoIP and E1 -- needed true full duplex rather than
packet-based transmission to eliminate time lag, for example. E1
is 2Mb/s spectrum used for simultaneously carrying 30 voice
calls, such as between PABXs.
"True full duplex means it's transmitting in both
directions at the same time," Chiswell said. "If it's
packet-based, it's only half -- it's still ping-ponging [back
and forth]."
He said the nearest competitor -- Time Division
Duplex (TDD) -- was 72Mb/s but that meant it was really only
about 36Mb/s. True full duplex at 45Mb/s was equivalent to
90Mb/s TDD, he said.
IDS has just signed to sell Aeras Networks' gear,
a decision Chiswell claimed was driven partly by the estimated
value to the market of this one product. At the moment, the
product was unique in the Australian market, although rivals
would surely copy Aeras Networks' move swiftly.
He said products in the Wavelink line were also
rated as able to go for seven years without failing and claimed
99.999 percent availability -- a feature rare in unlicensed
products.
Chiswell planned to market the line aggressively
across Australia, New Zealand and Oceania -- starting by giving
out a US$100 'Thomas Jefferson' bill to each reseller which
bought into the line, he said.
Resellers were already showing interest. About
six had ousted previous products of choice from a deal in favour
of Aeras Networks, he claimed.
Jim Adams, director at Victorian point-to-point
microwave provider Jas Broadband, said he had looked at the
Aeras Networks radios with a view to using them for some
clients. They were pretty good, he said.
"I use a competitor's product at the moment and
these look to be more capacity, more user-friendly and faster,"
he said. "If you look at the cost-price, there's nothing
[comparable at the moment]."
A window of opportunity existed for service
providers and resellers to make money with such a product, Adams
said, as it could "definitely" prove valuable point-to-point
microwave providers such as Jas Broadband and also for back-haul
use by ISPs.
"We're talking 45Mb/s. That's a lot of bandwidth
and its at a reasonable cost," he said. "With ISPs, they carry
point-to-multi-point, but to send out from a multi-point system
you need backbone and that could be it."
