Nextel Broadband Deploys Flarion (updated)

Nextel has deployed their initial BWIA system using Flarion's Flash-OFDM in a marketing trial in Raleigh-Durham / Chapel Hill, North Carolina USA. Continuing in its role as wireless industry innovator, Nextel "thought differently" and deployed a system using the 2.5-2.7 GHz MMDS/ITFS band) spectrum it acquired from Worldcom and Nucentrix bankruptcies, and deploying a system that does not adhere to the "3G" wireless telephony evolutionary path. The system delivers up to 1.5 Mbps, full mobility, and the primary client device is a PCMCIA card (and external modem is also available.) The web site - www.nextelbroadband.com is remarkably informative.

This is the first of what I expect to be many such announcements in 2004 - Broadband Wireless Internet Access systems that offer features far in excess of what can be achieved with wireline broadband or wireless telephony; greater speeds, mobility, more favorable pricing, better coverage, etc.

I'll be covering Nextel Broadband in greater depth in this week's issue of FOCUS On Broadband Wireless Internet Access.

Update 2/9/2004: In my research for FOCUS on this story, I found my way to Telepocalypse: Telecom strategy in the age of end-to-end networks (now added to my links at the right), where the current entry is The end of wireless as we know it. Martin Geddes does a great job of explaining why FLASH-OFDM is so superior to "3G" systems as a mobile broadband system (essentially because it's designed for packet-switching and low latency, aided and abetted by OFDM.)

But, Geddes, like most, misses the main point about such systems... not only are such systems great mobile broadband systems, superior to "3G"... but they're more than good enough to displace wireline broadband systems. Therein lies a challenge for Nextel to which they may well not rise... that their broadband wireless system may well be, in the minds of potential customers, superior in price, performance, or availability to wireline broadband systems. Will Nextel recognize that market segment... or will it blithely market what it perceives as a purely mobile broadband service?

Steve Stroh