Can You Guess What's Missing from CTIA's "A Series of Firsts"?

I'll tell 'ya, fixed wireless gets no respect.

Not to pick on CTIA, because WISPA and other trade associations also don't know that there was an entire decade, 1987-1997, where fixed wireless access (#FWA) reigned supreme. As far as they're all concerned, the industry started in 1997 with the release of 802.11.

But let me fill you in. ??

FWA emerged in 1987 from a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup, Microwave Bypass Systems. Then, the tech was called various things like, "microwave WANs" and even more awkwardly, "LAN extension over microwave". It conformed to 802.3 and met the full internet speed at the time (10 Mbps, full-duplex). Fiber couldn't touch it and to be fair, it was hard to find.

I know a lot about this time, because I was the founder of Microwave Bypass and my dream was to create the first wireless solution for the emerging internet. And talk about ahead of our time, before that, we were connecting folks like MIT, Harvard and UC Berkeley to ARPANET.

How far did we get?

In 1991, LAN Times featured us on page one as a leading contender for the 1990s LAN market, and by 1997, Aberdeen Group had us with a 75-80% market share. Along the way we made FWA proud, providing early internet access for elite institutions and tech firms across 47-states, and minting new internet millionaires in Mexico, Brazil and Australia.

Thereafter, Cisco ate our lunch with their own 2 Mbps 802.11 solution. Though it was inferior to ours, there was no competing with Cisco's name.

If you're interested in fixed wireless access history, you'll enjoy my short story on how the industry got started and for more content, visit "Microwave Bypass and the Start of Fixed Wireless Access".

And so, CTIA, I took the initiative to mark up your diagram, "A Series of Firsts". It would make all of us look good if you ran with it ;-)

?? Today, FWA is poised for a phenomenal comeback as an essential solution for enterprise networks. To that end, I chair an industry consortium—repurposing tired, old "wireless backup" for the greatest WISP opportunity of our time—preventing billions in business disruption from extreme weather.

It's about a special class of wireless backhaul, CERTIFIED for resilience, and the idea is to defeat 3 problems:

1. Lack of consistent quality (i.e., fixed wireless's "bad" reputation),
2. The race to zero for internet providers, and;
3. The rising trend of extreme weather.

If you're a WISP or ISP competing on bandwidth and price, STOP IT, that's a sucker's game. Instead, give me 8-weeks to develop a new business opportunity for you and afterward, you'll CRUSH it in metro markets. ?? You'll sell 5-10 gigabits at a time—never subject to competitive price pressure—and incumbents can't do a thing about it.

For more on that, visit us at Resilient Internet, and email me to schedule a call: [email protected].

Enjoy the weekend!

David

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