MMDS Gets Boost from Communications Giants

Communications Technology
By Natalia A. Feduschak, Senior Editor
September 2000

Taking a cue from the cable industry in the need for standards, communications companies have forged two separate initiatives to promote Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS).

The first, dubbed the Wireless DSL Consortium, encompasses six leading communications and semiconductor companies who have joined together to accelerate deployment of wireless access solutions. The other, known as the Breckenridge Agreement, was initiated by Sprint and MCI WorldCom.

"There should be one set of standards," says Lamar Bishop, a consultant to the Wireless DSL Consortium. "What we want to do is to converge...so that the industry will not be as chaotic."

Comprised of ADC, Conexant Systems, Gigabit Wireless, Intel, Nortel Systems and Vyyo, the Wireless DSL consortium hopes to provide the industry with an open standard that will allow suppliers to make multi-vendor products for the broadband wireless access markets. The group says it will provide a forum to define, develop and implement a set of open interfaces for broadband wireless access products operating in the 2.5GHz MMDS band in the United States and Canada and the 3.5 GHz band internationally.

The solution will include non-line-of-sight (NLOS) operations in all regions of the world and access speeds that are faster than current broadband solutions. To accomplish its goal, the consortium is expected to pursue next-generation multifaceted standards that take advantage of recent technological advantages.

Residential, small office-home office (SOHO), telecommuters, as well as small-to-medium enterprise (SME) clients are the consortium’s target audiences. The first product of the consortium will be the adoption of an air interface this year, based on the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specialization (DOCSIS).

The Breckenridge Agreement

Coming on the heels of their failed merger, Sprint and MCI WorldCom have jumped on the MMDS bandwagon by unveiling the Breckenridge Agreement in early July. The companies introduced an industry-wide spectrum management plan which creates a set of standards, spectrum band plans and operating procedures necessary to build out new high-speed data services in markets across the U.S. that lack high-speed Internet connections.

"At the beginning of 1999, the industry was in trouble," says Robert Hoskins, director of corporate communications for Sprint’s broadband wireless group. "People didn’t want to work with each other, didn’t want to see past each other."

Sprint determined it would be better to work together rather than separately.

"The problem is when you roll out a market, you have 33 frequencies," says Hoskins. "What we all agree on was which side of the road we’re going to drive on.... We’ve agreed on using a certain number of channels for upstream, and others for downstream."

Determining a set of standards makes sense for an industry that is expected to see fixed wireless broadband revenues soar at a compound annual growth rate of 140 percent and reach revenues of $16.3 billion by the year 2004.

"The year 2000 should be a catalyst year for fixed wireless growth in the following years," says James Mendelson, an analyst for the Strategis Group in Washington, DC, who co-authored a study on world wireless broadband.

While Hoskins says the market will boom, he admits the competing consortiums aren’t planning to merge anytime soon, although his group has been asked to join the Wireless DSL Consortium.

"We’re not part of that consortium yet," Hoskins said. "The whole thing is going through a giant learning curve."

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