Wireless is becoming more than just a means of creating a LAN  in a home or office, or of connecting while on the road. New high-speed point-to-point wireless technologies are beginning to find a place in parts of the network that used to require fiber connectivity.

Of course, wireless technologies have long been used for point-to-point links using licensed and unlicensed wireless solutions. But these solutions have typically either been too expensive or too limited to rival wireline fiber services for business requiring 10M bit/sec circuits or higher.

We recently spoke with a provider - Telecom Ottawa , the CLEC subsidiary of Hydro Ottawa - that believes to have found a wireless solution that rivals its fiber network in price and performance. Telecom Ottawa provides fiber services to business, schools and government within the 5,000 square kilometer borders of the city of Ottawa. The company is mainly focused on being a “Broadband Utility” for customers requiring 10M bit/sec or greater broadband connectivity.

Despite a network that Telecom Ottawa describes as the largest 10G bit/sec Ethernet network in North America, the company still found itself running into potential customers that were not “on the grid” for their fiber infrastructure and that didn’t make business case sense for new fiber deployments. Telecom Ottawa tried several iterations of wireless solutions for these customers – both licensed and unlicensed, as well as free-space optics (FSO) – but didn’t find a satisfactory system until they hit upon a local company, DragonWave.

Using DragonWave’s AirPair system, Telecom Ottawa has been able to offer services up to 100M bit/sec at considerably less cost than the more traditional microwave solutions the company had been trialing. AirPair also fits well into Telecom Ottawa’s network due to the system’s native Ethernet interface - many competing solutions that Telecom Ottawa tried presented SONET  interfaces which required additional equipment to mate up to the company’s Ethernet backbone.

The AirPair system (starting at about $18,000 per radio pair, including antenna) has a range of about 10 miles,  significantly greater than the FSO systems Telecom Ottawa trialed. It is also immune to environmental issues, including the severe cold experienced in Telecom Ottawa’s territory during winter months.  AirPair uses spectrum between 18 MHz and 38 MHz; Telecom Ottawa is using licensed frequencies in the 18 GHz and 23 GHz bands. With nearly 20 revenue-producing circuits in place, Telecom Ottawa has not yet experienced a single outage.