PluggedIn: Fed Up with DSL? Go Wireless
Tue Jun 25, 1:43 PM ET
By Reed Stevenson
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Fed up with the long wait for high-speed Internet access?
After digital subscriber line services promising high-speed Net access over existing copper telephone wires fell well short of expectations -- with lengthy delays and installation problems -- a new wireless technology will come out later this year that promises to eliminate the hassle of getting broadband at home.
It's a wireless connection based on third-generation mobile phone technology that will bypass problematic wire and cable networks to deliver fast Internet and telephone access to homes and businesses over airwaves.
"My impression is that people want broadband, and they're not concerned whether its 100 K (kilobits per second) or 1 Meg (megabits per second)," said Greg Caltabiano, Soma Networks Inc.'s senior vice president for Worldwide Networks.
"They just want it to work," he said.
Wireless technology developer Soma's solution is a box that users can buy in a shop or have sent to them at home that will work the moment the power is turned on, with minimal installation and configuration.
It will look like a cable modem ( news - web sites) but send and receive signals via a wireless connection based on W-CDMA ( news - web sites), or wideband code division multiple access, one of the wireless technologies that will power the next generation of mobile phones.
So where can you get this new contraption, which has ethernet and telephone ports and sounds too simple to be true?
Telephone carriers and Internet services providers will be providing it under their own brands in the second half of this year, Caltabiano said, adding that users should look for the buzzwords "easy-to-use," "hassle-free" and "works out of the box."
While the number of broadband cable, DSL or high-speed network users has grown to 25 million, that only represents about one-tenth of the U.S. population and underscores the huge potential for growth in the market for fast Internet access.
San Francisco-based Soma says that it has been able to bring the costs of operating a broadband network low enough for carriers to deploy the new broadband technology at competitive rates.
That doesn't mean it will be slow, however. Access speeds are expected to be upward of 12 megabits per second -- more than 200 times the speed of a regular dial-up connection.
LAST MILE TO NO MILE?
The issue essentially concerns "last-mile" connections, the last hop that carriers and Internet service providers need to link their networks into people's homes.
Often, telephone networks are built on old copper wires, which were only meant to carry voice calls as analog signals.
And decades ago, cable companies delivering television to homes had no idea that they would one day compete with phone companies for subscriber dollars.
Still, the disillusionment with DSL has been more the result of the hype that preceded it, rather than the actual speed of deployment, argues Lee Rainie, a director of the Pew Project, which tracks online user trends.
"We see pretty steady growth that matches the adoption of other technologies," he said.
But for carriers, that's not enough, as they seek to deliver good news amid a prolonged telecoms slump that has punished their share prices.
Last week, Verizon Communications teamed up with Microsoft Corp. to co-brand its DSL service with MSN, Microsoft's Web portal and Internet access service.
Covad Communications Group Inc. rolled out a new high-speed Internet service last week with a price tag 20 percent lower than the typical $50 per month charged by phone giants like Verizon and SBC Communications.
Covad's proposition avoids over-promising on DSL services: they offer lower rates in return for slower speeds and more reliable DSL access.
Soma's Caltabiano said that carriers -- although he declined to identify which ones -- have been looking for a way to solve the high costs associated with deploying DSL and have held extensive trials with its wireless broadband technology.
In Japan, Soma will be delivering its technology to NTT Communications Corp, the Internet and long-distance arm of the incumbent former state telecoms monopoly, which is marketing its broadband Internet technology as an alternative to wireless LAN (local area networks).
But unlike wireless LAN, the Soma-based network will be secure and proprietary, thus shutting out nonpaying users that log in and eat up bandwidth.
So where can you get this in the United States? Well, that too, is a secret.
"By the second half of this year there will be a number of different areas where this will be provided," he said.
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