Are You Ready To Sell Today's Broadband Wireless Technology?

By Business Solutions magazine

It's always interesting to see how certain technologies evolve year to year. Broadband wireless is one such technology that's worth keeping up with because, first, it changes dramatically every year, and second, new wireless applications and challenges are springing up all the time. I recently spoke with three industry experts and got their input on the latest broadband wireless trends and the impact on VARs. There is no single theme that each expert focused on. Rather, there are four trends you need to know about, including how you'll need to position your business and potential pitfalls you should avoid.

According to Kip Williams, VP of business development at TESSCO, "Just two years ago, licensed wireless solutions were pretty rare, but since that time we've seen a dramatic increase in interest and adoption. We're seeing a growing demand for licensed radios that use 6 GHz, 11 GHz, 18 GHz, and 23 GHz frequencies. Additionally, within the past year it's become much easier for VARs to apply for licenses on behalf of their customers." In the past, a VAR had to practically hire a consultant to figure out how to acquire a broadband wireless spectrum license. Today, however, there are several companies that have purchased blocks of wireless spectrum on different frequencies, and they're either reselling their blocks or renting blocks. "What's nice about using licensed wireless is that you don't have to worry about interference from other wireless radios because the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] guarantees that no one else in the nearby vicinity is permitted to use the same frequency," says Williams. According to Williams, TESSCO is seeing licensed deployments in vertical markets such as manufacturing, healthcare, and finance. The reasons customers prefer licensed solutions are because of existing wireless interference problems (especially in densely populated areas) or to prevent perceived future interference issues.

Dan Foster, general manager and senior VP of SMB and channel markets at MegaPath, also sees a rising adoption of licensed wireless deployments — primarily 3G wireless services from carriers such as Sprint and Verizon. "The introduction of 3G technologies enables customers that previously required expensive VSAT [very small aperture terminal] or T1 connections to be serviced with wireless broadband," says Foster. Foster also sees advances in wireless security with licensed and unlicensed wireless deployments as another significant trend. "One of the issues with broadband wireless technology in the past was that it didn't support private network connections such as IPsec [Internet Protocol security] VPN [virtual private network] tunneling," he says. "Today, the throughput and latency of 3G solutions are greatly improved over legacy 1xRTT [single radio transmission technology] solutions, which used to perform only slightly better than dial-up. Improvements in broadband wireless solutions enable support of a variety of security options, and they can even be integrated with MPLS [multiprotocol label switching] networks, which offer numerous benefits over traditional layer 2 networks." By integrating wireless broadband with MPLS, VARs can deliver QoS (quality of service) and managed security services for wireless broadband customers.

Used with permission from Business Solutions magazine