Dallas-based Clearwire, a point-to-multipoint ISP targeting small businesses, has had some success charging anywhere from $100 to $200 a month for service in remote areas such as West Texas where there are no DSL lines. But other than in out-of-the-way places, the future for point-to-multipoint in the United States is not that bright (Baldwin says he is ready to write off LMDS). However, Craig Mathias, an industry analyst and founder of the Ashland Mass.-based Farpoint Group, isn’t quite so dire, noting that point-to-multipoint may still have a bright future in developing nations that don’t have a telecommunications infrastructure already in place.

Free Space Optics

Free space optics, a third technology trying to catch on, is not fixed wireless in the traditional sense. It is not a radio signal at all, but rather a laser. While it sounds like something out of Star Wars, it actually works the same as fixed wireless?data travels through the air?and as such gets lumped into the same category almost by default. Free space optics is a relatively new technology. The laser beam is about the size of a baseball and can travel up to half a mile, but because it operates at between 750 to 1,500 nanometers it is invisible to the eye (700 is the highest visible spectrum). It can achieve speed up to 1GB per second.

Larry Ice, CIO of Fisher Communications, a Seattle-based communications and media company that owns and operates several television and radio stations, uses a free space optics service provided by Seattle-based ISP Terabeam. Fisher broke ground on its own building in 1999 and when they began moving into the as-yet-unfinished structure a year later Ice realized that they needed to connect the old and the new offices. Qwest, AT&T and others wanted around $47,000 a month for high-speed data lines, plus fees to dig up the street to lay the cable. Terabeam was able to connect the buildings at half the price, in half the time and offer 10 times the bandwidth.

Free space optics is not problem-free, however. One foggy day, Ice lost his connection for about an hour. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was a hassle because the T1 backup line he insisted on as a condition to signing with Terabeam wasn’t in place yet. In fact, Ice says that while he was attracted to the speed and ease of installation with free space optics, he only decided to use it once he knew he would also have a landline backup.