New broadband wireless player enters Canadian market, increases competition

The arrival of a new U.S. broadband player in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is putting increased pressure on Canadian wireless access companies to introduce services quickly, or risk losing market share to unregulated foreign competitors. Last week, Fuzion Wireless Communications Inc of Boca Raton FL began offering its high-speed broadband wireless service to businesses in Toronto and other locations throughout Ontario. It circumvented the need to lease capacity from an existing player by operating in a licence-exempt frequency band. Capacity at 5.8 GHz has been up for grabs since last year, when Industry Canada aligned its policy on the use of licence-exempt frequencies with that of the U.S. By offering service at 5.8 GHz, Fuzion Canada gains quick market entry, and avoids expensive capacity leasing agreements with any number of spectrum holders in Canada. The American parent’s VP marketing and business development, Matt Haynes isn’t aware of any other player operating in this band, and being first to market in this space bodes well for the company. Use of this band is on a first come first serve basis. "It’s really like the movie Far and Away when they shoot the gun off and everybody gets in their covered wagons and runs out and stakes their piece of property," he quips. Fuzion plans to quickly expand beyond the GTA, but company executives couldn’t provide specifics on the roll out plans, nor the next regions on the slate due to Securities Exchange Commission regulations. It will, however, be targeting tier 2 cities with a large concentration of small- and medium-sized businesses that require bandwidth in the 500 kbs to 45 Mbs range. It plans to offer primarily point-to-multipoint connectivity, but will provide point-to-point systems where necessary. "It’s not our core business," says Haynes, "but in specific and strategically significant business opportunities we’ll do it." He says many large organizations that have branch offices want to know how the disparate offices will be connected that aren’t in the coverage area. "So we end up having to do a mixed bag of point-to-multipoint and then point-to-point (systems deployment) to accommodate them," he says. 5.8 GHz presents better characteristics than other bands Using the unlicensed national information infrastructure (UNII) bands has some distinct advantages over other licence-exempt and licensed bands such as MCS at 2.5 GHz and LMCS in the upper frequency bands. It has greater bandwidth available than at the lower MCS frequency, and propagation through foliage will be greater than the much higher LMCS frequencies. The company claims its equipment is robust enough to withstand the harshest of weather. It conducted a series of reliability tests in Hurricanes Irene, Dennis and Floyd and Tropical Storm Harvey. Timing was also a factor in Fuzion’s decision to move into Canada. Only two Canadian LMCS players have launched wireless service to date (Stream Intelligent Networks Corp and Maxlink Communications Inc – RoW, May 16/00 and July 10/00), and the majority that won spectrum in the 24/38 GHz auction are still finalizing their deployment plans. For the time being, Fuzion will only sell bandwidth capacity and has not yet begun to offer any applications with its service package. "Right now, it’s strictly a bandwidth play," Haynes told Report on Wireless, adding that "we definitely have some discussions going on for some applications that will be in very high demand for our customers." While he wouldn’t be specific on the types of applications, he did reveal that voice over IP and security may be among the applications offered. The network is also capable of handling such high-bandwidth applications as video conferencing, streaming media, interactive remote applications and data networking. Founded in February 1999, the 18-month old privately held firm already has systems up and running in Boca Raton, Tampa, Rochester NY and Denver CO. It recently launched its network in Panama City, marking the company’s first foray into Latin America.

New broadband wireless player enters Canadian market, increases competition

News | August 21, 2000

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