High-speed wireless rollouts begin next month

Computerworld - Next month, the Hyatt Regency hotel on the island of Maui, in Hawaii, will start offering guests mobile wireless service that blazes along at 256K bit/sec., or four to five times the speed of next-generation high-speed data services provided by U.S. cellular carriers.
Gary Bulson, director of engineering at the Hyatt Regency Maui, said capital costs for the new service are only $10,000 -- the price of 25 pocket-size modems that tap into the high-speed service provided by Maui SkyFiber in Kihei, Maui.
Steve Berkoff, managing director at Maui SkyFiber, said his system -- which will eventually blanket the island of Maui -- has a raw throughput of 3M bit/sec., though he plans to limit it to 1.2M bit/sec., "because we don't have demand for that kind of speed on Maui."
Berkoff intends to use the system to provide both mobile and fixed wireless service on Maui, with prices ranging from $12.95 per day for hotel guests using the mobile service to $349.95 per month for a 768K fixed service to enterprise customers, a rate he says favorably compares to cable modem or Digital Subscriber Line rates on the island.
Maui SkyFiber offers this service, based on the international Universal Mobile Telecommunications standard, over a licensed system operating in the 2.5- to 2.6-GHz Multi-channel Multi-Point Distribution service frequency band. That band was designated by the Federal Communications Commission for fixed wireless operation, delivering either video or data.
Berkoff said the key to the speed and mobility of his operation is technology developed by IP Wireless in San Bruno, Calif., that takes advantage of multipath signals. Such signals are usually rejected by ordinary radio receivers, which zero in on a direct signal.
But multipath signals are the Holy Grail of radio frequency engineering, according to Chris Gilbert, CEO of IP Wireless. His company has developed patented software that harnesses the power of the multipath signals to provide a quantum increase in throughput.
Berkoff said that when he started to investigate the IP Wireless technology, he approached it with skepticism, wondering "if it was smoke and mirrors." Not only does the technology work, Berkoff said, but it also has far lower capital costs than so-called third-generation cellular wireless systems such as those offered by Nokia Corp. in Espoo, Finland.
Berkoff estimated his capital costs per cell at $100,000, as opposed to $250,000 per cell for similar equipment from a vendor such as Nokia.
Joe Brooks, vice president of sales and market development at the Broadband Solutions division of financially troubled WorldCom Inc.,