France Telecom Picks Aperto As Fixed Wireless Key

Communications Today, Nov 13, 2001

The way France Telecom [FTE] sees it, AT&T Wireless [AWE] prematurely decided to exit the fixed wireless space and Sprint [FON] probably will reconsider its decision to stop adding new fixed wireless customers.

France Telecom said yesterday it will use Aperto Networks' technology to launch wireless broadband operations in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America.

In addition, the French company's venture capital subsidiary, Innovacom VC, made an investment of between $2 million and $3 million in Aperto during its series B financing round.

France Telecom made its fixed wireless move after Redmond, Wash.-based AT&T Wireless said it will shut down its fixed wireless operation and Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint said it would stop deploying its wireless broadband operation in new markets and stop adding new customers in its existing markets.

Those companies wouldn't make the same decisions if they were operating systems with new wireless broadband technology, Frederic Veyssiere, managing director of Innovacom, told Communications Today. "Those business models are not viable," Veyssiere said. "They're still reaping the results of what happened with first-generation systems."

But Innovacom expects demand for wireless broadband service worldwide to support vendors - like Aperto - offering technologies that improve the performance of fixed wireless systems while lowering operators' and end users' costs. "We're convinced that this space is going to be big and there's going to be a lot of players there," Veyssiere said. "You can kind of discard 90 percent of those companies because they basically are first-generation companies."

Milpitas, Calif.-based Aperto develops network and end-user equipment for 2.5 GHz, 3.5 GHz and 5 GHz fixed wireless systems. Its systems deliver peak data rates of 20 Mbps, both to end users' devices and from their devices into the networks, said Chairman and CEO Reza Ahy.

Since the company began shipping its technologies two months ago to smaller service providers, 10 of its base stations have been put into operation and 30 to 50 end users in small- to medium-sized businesses are receiving service, Ahy said. Aperto was launched in 1999 and has raised $35 million in equity financing.

--Malcolm Spicer, mspicer@pbimedia.com >TK