Is 'Fixed Wireless' Broadband Internet Starting a Price War?

By Dan Baldwin, Sales Director, ATEL Communications Inc.

Before having my customers sign or renew a long term agreement for broadband Internet access, I make sure they’ve taken a new look at fixed wireless it’s not just for the boondocks anymore.

Definition Fixed wireless broadband works the same way as DSL, cable or T1 broadband Internet access except that the connection between the broadband provider and the broadband customer is transmitted between two microwave dishes. One microwave dish is on the roof of the business customer’s building. The customer’s microwave dish is then pointed at the broadband provider’s microwave dish, located on a tower on a hill or building which can be quite close or several miles away. The main requirement for fixed wireless to work is “line of sight” the space between the two microwave dishes needs to be unobstructed.

Advantages Fixed wireless has many advantages over terrestrial or wired broadband Internet access.

1. Price Bit for bit, fixed wireless used to command a premium because the only businesses that ever ordered it were those businesses that couldn’t get DSL or cable Internet. Today, fixed wireless usually cost just two-thirds of what an equivalent wired connection would cost. As bandwidth requirements climb above the single T1 capacity of 1.5MB fixed wireless becomes very attractive. Need three or more megs of broadband Internet access? Get a fixed wireless quote first and compare all other quotes to it.

2. Quick Installation Because most wired Internet T1s are delivered over the “last mile” by the local phone company, the normal installation interval is six weeks. Because fixed wireless providers bypass the phone company’s “local loop” and access the customer directly via microwave, installation intervals can be cut to just one week.

3. Quick Scalability Unlike wired broadband connections, fixed wireless connections can be scaled up almost instantly with a phone call. Need to double or triple your bandwidth? No problem. Try that with a wired Internet T1!

4. Affordable Redundancy As more businesses demand two separate broadband Internet connections to ensure connectivity if one goes down, fixed wireless providers are all but giving away the store by throwing in a wired Internet connection at near wholesale pricing to their wireless customers. Many businesses find they can get both a 6mbps fixed wireless Internet connection and a 1.5mbps wired Internet connection through a fixed wireless provider for the same price as many wired providers can provide just a single wired 6mbps circuit.

5. No “Satellite-like” Latency Fixed wireless Internet access is not the same as satellite Internet access. Satellite Internet, widely advertised under the brand “DirecPC” by Hughes, beams the customer’s signal to a satellite orbiting the Earth 24,000 miles in space. When a Web page is taking an extra 50,000 mile round trip through outer space to get to your computer screen there’s going to be a bit of latency (count one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three ) before the Web page populates on the screen. Because fixed wireless only beams the signal a couple miles at most, latency is a non-issue when compared to satellite or wired Internet access.

Disadvantages Only a few and they’re rarely deal breakers.

1. Geographically Restricted Fixed wireless service providers aren’t everywhere because of the capital expenses required of the service provider to initiate service in a market. Fixed wireless is either available in your area or it’s not.

2. Line of Sight Sensitive Even though you may be in a fixed wireless service provider’s footprint (they have a microwave on the mountain next to your city) that doesn’t guarantee line of sight to your building if there’s a tall tree or a tall building between your rooftop and the provider’s microwave tower.

3. Rooftop & Permission Issues Most business buildings were built to accommodate a phone room in the basement that feeds phone and data wire to all the offices. The same can not be said for most business rooftops. Fixed wireless providers know how to get the Internet from the roof to you server room but you’ll likely need to prove you have the building owner’s permission before they install the microwave dish on the roof.

Price Wars The only way for your business customers to take advantage of the price war developing between fixed and wired broadband Internet providers is to make sure one or more fixed wireless providers bid for your businesses broadband Internet and data service the next time you call for quotes. Not only will you be pleased with the price but you’ll also be pleased with the terms. One particularly aggressive fixed Internet provider is providing an early termination fee that is only $500 total. The deals are out there but only offered to those businesses and agents that ask.

Use a “Quote Cop” Nothing can be more exasperating for a business owner or telecom agents than trying to get multiple providers to give written quotes for a service they know will be shopped out. They either won’t provide the detail you need or will purposely underbid a core functionality and then pile on the extras once the agreement is signed and the drop-dead order date is passed. To bypass this quoting challenge many agents and businesses simply use a telecom and data broker/consultant as their “quote cop” to make sure only apples are compared to apples and that everything that is needed for a service to work has been quoted.

ATELbroker.com ATEL acts as a broker to both business end-users and telecom agents/consultants. Whether you’re trying to get the best for your business or the best for your clients give ATEL a call. ATEL vets all the solution and service providers they broker. When your carrier quote comes through ATEL you can rest assured that the service or solution will be priced correctly and then provisioned on time.

Dan Baldwin is founder of TelecomAssociation and director of sales at ATEL Communications Inc. Founded in 1985, ATEL is the largest NEC telephone equipment dealer in Southern California. Baldwin works with ATEL’s carrier services division that acts as an in-house telecom master agency to sell network services (including SIP trunks and other specialized IP services) to ATEL’s embedded base of 2,000 phone equipment customers. For more information about ATEL’s carrier services division please visit www.ATELcc.com. TelecomAssociation is a membership organization founded in 1995 that serves the information & communication needs of its 2,500 members who distribute telecom and related services to businesses.