Telecom Wireless To Purchase Adaptive Broadband Equipment

Sunnyvale, CA-based Adaptive Broadband Corp. has signed a $225 million, five-year contract to provide its AB-Access fixed wireless broadband equipment to Englewood, CO-based Telecom Wireless Corp. (TWC). TWC's business plan focuses on the convergence of video, voice, and data to bring broadband connectivity, content, and e-commerce over a wireless platform through the Internet to residential and business customers in both the United States and abroad.

E-Commerce
"Adaptive Broadband's AB-Access product is a key element in TWC's strategy to deploy a digital wireless platform enabling us to provide competitive product and service offerings to contend with our national competitors," said Calvin D. Smiley, Telecom Wireless president. "This will position TWC to provide an affordable and reliable 'last mile' solution for business and residential subscribers, which traditionally has been offered by the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs)."

Business-to-business e-commerce will account for 80% of Internet traffic five years from now, according to industry reports.

"To succeed in the e-commerce arena, two-way, high-speed transmission of multimedia applications is mandatory," said Frederick D. Lawrence, Adaptive Broadband chairman and CEO. AB-Access currently officers a high-speed data rate of 25Mb/s and plans 100Mb/s this year.

The Technology
AB-Access spans the frequency range from 2 GHz to 42 GHz. The first releases are for applications using the 5 GHz unlicensed national information infrastructure (U-NII) and 2.5 GHz multi-channel, multi-point distribution service (MMDS) frequency bands. Telecom Wireless licenses MMDS spectrum in Florida and will conduct a marketing trial with Adaptive's MMDS product. Adaptive Broadband plans to introduce an AB-Access product for the 3.5 GHz market in Europe during the first quarter of 2000.

Point-to multipoint wireless networks being deployed with AB-Access include transmission hubs that contain six transmitter/receivers, each having 60° access points for complete 360° coverage. These access points are each serviced by an ATM-configured transceiver with a 25 Mb/s channel, which can be shared by up to 256 active service users because bandwidth is dynamically assigned. This scheduling is made possible by the product's proprietary MAC (media access control) software, as well as by ATM's small fixed cell length. The technology allows bandwidth to be supplied with cell-by-cell precision, essentially providing packet-on-demand capability. The ultimate result is that bandwidth of up to 25 Mb/s is readily available to all users on the network.

Edited by Ellen Jensen