Barrett stymied by big wireless players in bid to provide national rural broadband service

Barrett Xplore Inc. will now be able to serve an additional two million Canadians living in rural regions after acquiring 3.5 GHz spectrum from Mipps Inc. Extending broadband to even more communities, however, is being hindered by major telecom companies unwilling to share their rural spectrum, the company contends.When combined with its previous purchase of Pathcom Wireless and its spectrum holdings last year, the broadband satellite and wireless ISP can now provide service to about four million Canadians from New Brunswick to British Columbia.Bill MacDonald, VP of products and services at Barrett, says it was critical to get more spectrum in order to serve as many rural residents as possible because the economics of rural broadband require a mix of satellite and terrestrial wireless."We have a hybrid fixed wireless and satellite and we're 100% convinced that the only way rural Canada is going to get broadband is with the right broadband technology that can meet the economics and densities ," he tells Report on Wireless. "As you move out from the urban areas, you get densities that are right for fixed wireless and then as you get out even further into the sparsely populated areas that's where our broadband satellite solution fits."Since the spectrum purchase last month, Barrett has already turned on 10 towers in the Ottawa region and many more in other parts of the country. The company was able to do this so quickly by leveraging its existing network of unlicensed spectrum and converting it to a licensed system, according to MacDonald. "We've already lit up tones of sites with that spectrum: we have it all lined up and ready to go," he says.Moving from an unlicensed network to one using the 3.5 GHz spectrum gives Barrett an advantage both from a network perspective as well as a customer acquisition point of view."It helps us stabilize our backbone, gives us better reliability and gives our customers a more robust and reliable infrastructure," MacDonald says. "It gives us the ability to further penetrate markets where there are noise floor issues from unlicensed spectrum, so it's another layer within our portfolio."While Barrett now has the spectrum to serve four million rural Canadians, the company is still looking to fill in the gaps in what could be a "national" rural wireless network. The company would have to acquire bandwidth in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador for this to happen, which MacDonald says depends on negotiating with the holders of those licences.Finding rural spectrumFinding that additional spectrum is a challenge. MacDonald explains that more than 50% of this bandwidth is owned by the major telecom companies. Rural Canadians could be better served if Barrett had access to additional spectrum in these regions, he contends."If I could find more willing and cooperative licence holders, we'd be able to do a lot more with rural Canada, but there's a lot of spectrum out there that's not being used," MacDonald argues.To date, deployment of networks using 3.5 GHz spectrum has been limited to regional plays and this raises doubts whether Industry Canada's current spectrum licensing regime that focuses on licence region rather than urban versus rural is the right way to go. Barrett has previously written to the government in the consultation leading to the licensing framework for the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum auction that the government should make a distinction between urban and rural spectrum.Will this issue be raised again in the 700 MHz licensing consultation in a couple of years? It's unclear, but it certainly seems like an issue that should be studied in further detail.

Barrett stymied by big wireless players in bid to provide national rural broadband service

News | 09/05/2008 4:54 pm EDT

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