Is XO Bringing Their Old LMDS Back To Life?
April 6, 2010 10 Comments
by Elias Shams
XO Communications made an announcement yesterday about the expansion of their broadband wireless coverage across the Washington, D.C., region with the deployment of a new wireless hub in the Tysons Corner area. According to the release, the DC expansion is targeted at businesses and enterprises seeking either connectivity or redundancy from 10Mbps to 1Gbps anywhere in the DC metro area, roughly in a polygon bounded by Dulles International Airport, Lanham MD, Rockville and Beltsville MD, and Mount Vernon, Virginia.
I was under the impression they have had the Fixed Wireless present in DC – Northern VA markets for quite some time. Why another announcement? What’s new?
This is XO’s first announcement since their killing of Nextlink last year, the company they had acquired a while back for their LMDS (28-31Ghz) and microwave (39Ghz) spectrum licenses. XO barely managed to make any revenue from it though. So, they quietly disassembled the unit and absorbed the pieces last year.
With their yesterday announcement, does this mean the LMDS spectrum is ready to blossom again? Will it make them any revenue? Does this mean Craig McCaw, the founder of Nextlink and now the CEO of another Wireless company, Clearwire was on the right track all along? Back to the present time and most importantly, does this mean Clearwire’s WiMAX technology is on the right track?
Given the wireless data explosion, and the recent fiber/broadband initiatives by both Google and FCC, the XO announcement at this time around make sense then. The News might mean the Nextlink LMDS for wireless backhaul will have the most relevance from within a hybrid fiber/wireless perspective.
Anyway, I still remember XO’s $45,000 annual membership to my company, telezoo for our online marketing services back in 2003. The good old days 
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I agree, LMDS will be an optimum solution if deployed as an overlay network to target SMEs who requiring a huge bandwidth. WiMAX IEEE802.16 (e) could not be used to serve SMEs and consumer at the same time due to the difference in UL/DL requirement.
LMDS is based on ATM technology and therefore could not be a good choice for an operator aiming an all-IP solution.
Why do you think LMDS didn’t fly in early 2000? Do you think it was the cost associated with the ATM tech compare to IP?
LMDS wasn’t deployed very successfully because of hardware costs and RF Propagation. 29 GHz doesn’t fair very well in weather making the link distances really short. LMDS is only really useful when you absolutely can’t get fiber the last mile. Many times, it was cheaper to plow than beam.
There are/were ethernet-based (and TDM) radios using LMDS band but most of them were not multipoint, only point to point.
So, why not just WiMax that is already out there or possibly LTE when released? Why do YOU think XO waited this long to relaunch their LMDS? I noted my 2cents in the article. Would you agree?
Would love to see a good LMDS roll out. I remember a project I was partly involved in UAE, Satellite on the ground, MMDS on a very high tower 14 ghz I think.
John, why do YOU think LMDS did not fly? Do you think it will fly this time around?
One reason LMDS was not successful in the 1990s was that Wall Street and equipment vendors over-funded operators and exhorted operators to expand footprint at all costs – profits be damned. Wrong commercial focus. Perhaps if operators had focused more on customer service, profitability, cash flow and incremental expansion, they could have survived the dotcom bust…
Elias, I think LMDS Didn’t fly in early 2000, because at the time the demand for bandwidth, for most SMEs, was arround tens Mb, while presently the demand for bandwidth is increasing (multimedia, triple play,…) and therefore most SMEs prefer to go with Dark fiber (high CAPEX but very low OPEX and better bandwidth comparing to LMDS). Further, for SOHO and government applications (such public safety @ 4.9 GHz band) WiMAX (d) become a good solution with better rang and immunity against rain fading.
QoS, it seemed a great idea, STB manufacturers, which I was part of, thought it was great, but roll out suffered from performance. The STB’s where at the right price point, but as other spectrum’s became available, other solutions appeared. I think there is room for it, wasn’t New York and Alaska the only successful roll outs?
My dad invested quite a good bit of money into LMDS spectrum and even put some of it in my name. He has worked hard to keep vested interest in this technology and I have always wondered and planned to be ready for the time this technology offered an opportunity at a viable business. I know that the region covered an area of greater than 5 million population so it would seem that opportunity of one kind or another is within reach I hope.