January 2001

Whadda We Want? BANDWIDTH!
When Do We Want It? NOW!

BY MIKE VON WAHLDE

As far as I am concerned, wireless broadband is the wave of the future, and I am not just saying that so people read my TMCnet.com columns. Just as cellular phones have enabled us to roam about and still be trackable by those that need to reach, or be reached, by phone, so too can the wireless space bring high-speed Internet access to the fringe. A few bold statements:

1. Wireless will solve the last mile broadband issues.
2. Wireless will cure the illness of the broadband famine in third world.
3. Fixed wireless will be the first in many steps of consolidating a global wireless infrastructure.
4. There will be greater anti-trust sentiment that will grow out of the convergence of services.

This big, new century is dawning of the era of wireless. Why shouldn't it be? After all, our forefathers poked around in the same space and provided us with television and radio -- to not take up that torch would be a real shame. There are many, many telcos that are already sustaining fixed wireless broadband throughout the world. The reason why I feel that this technology will become so standardized is simple -- there is no room in the dirt for all this cable. Across Europe and in big metro areas, feeding the kind of "pipes" that could handle the growing need for broadband access is near impossible when cost-analysis comes into the picture. The telcos out there who want to get a leg up are peeking into this rapidly developing area and finding some real solutions from forward thinking companies.

Ceragon Networks is one such thinker. Not only has their FibeAir line of wireless broadband products proven themselves in use: They are actively deployed in more than twenty countries and five continents, boasting customers such as Winstar, Firstmark, and Advanced Radio Telecom. Their new offerings are promising some startling features and numbing bandwidth. Breaking the 155 Mbps barrier was only the beginning for Ceragon, pushing now to the beta stages of 622 Mbps--not just broadband, but ultra-high capacity broadband. Go ahead and converge all your communications and heap it on, Ceragon's networks seem to want to take it all and more, and they'll get it installed before lunch.

The FibeAir product family allows the capacity of fiber (and then some) without those pesky cost issues. Operating over multiple licensed frequencies: 18, 23, 36, LMDS and 38 GHz, and providing for scalability through an amazingly modular system, Ceragon is putting its wireless footprint in the sands of communications breakthrough.

The brilliance of this type of system shines through in the development of FibeAir. The system consists of an indoor networking unit, and outdoor unit, and CeragonView--the SNMP-based network management software.

Ceragon's FibeAir is a practically plug-and-play wireless broadband solution that scales to your needs and can be deployed in myriad fashions. FibeAir can be deployed as a metropolitan ring, as a corporate Web, or as a satellite location, which demonstrates its wide range of application and scalability, offering something to everyone dining at the broadband table, hungry for bandwidth.

We have some time to wait to see exactly where the entire industry is heading, but soon we will be casting our collective gaze to the sky, and saying "It's a bird, it's a plane, it's wireless broadband!" Look up closely around some major metropolitan areas and you just might spot a Ceragon outdoor unit perched on the cornice of a high-rise.

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