WLL never looked so good: now that wireless local loop technology, once hyped as the ultimate teledensity booster, has gone through its reality check, improved technologies and wiser business models could be the key to a WLL comeback—but not necessarily for the rural pops - Wireless

Telecom Asia, Oct, 2002 by John C. Tanner

Wireless local loop has long been touted as a quick cost-effective technology for connecting the unconnected, of whom there are plenty. The WLL value proposition has always looked good on paper--no hassles with digging, permits, or rights of way, which means faster deployment with lower labor costs. Broadband wireless access technologies promised all that and high-speed data. Compared to copper and fiber, WLL sounded like an easy sell and the answer to the dilemma of extending connectivity to everyone on the planet.

Only it didn't work out that way, of course.

Certainly there's been no shortage of WLL technologies over the last decade, from proprietary point-to-point and point-to-multipoint solutions to cellular-based WLL using CDMA and GSM, cordless-access WLL solutions using PHS and DECT, and broadband wireless technologies like LMDS and MMDS. With the exception of GSM, all of these have been deployed to varying degrees all over the world, yet none seem to have helped the world's underserved telecoms markets grow any faster than they were before.

What's up with that? The answer is all too familiar--like most new technologies, WLL talks a good game, but reality has the final say.

For a start, as Hong Kong's fixed wireless access licensees have discovered, the headache of getting rights of way or digging permits for wireline loop rollouts was replaced by the headache of getting roof-rights to install base stations and terminals, and accessing the building's wiring infrastructure to deliver services to individual flats.

Broadband wireless has also suffered from business models that the technology wasn't ready for, says Carlton O'Neal, marketing VP for Ensemble Communications. "Competitive carriers who wanted into the access market figured broadband wireless was the answer, and that they would build their own access networks with point-to-multipoint and point-to-point, but the technology available at that time wasn't ready to do that," O'Neal says.

Another problem for WLL in general was that its cost-effectiveness compared to wireline depended on rolling out gear for under $500 per line--which, in most cases, WLL couldn't beat.

"The cost deployment has always been too high compared to the expected return on investment, and the operating costs were also too high," says Kenneth Margon, R&D director of Cape Range Wireless.

Ironically, says Jean-luc Jezouin, Nortel Networks' vice president of Mobility Solutions, the cost problem has been especially true for the very areas WLL was theoretically best suited to help.

"Five or ten years ago, WLL was thought more as literally a substitute for a fixed line, and it was pitched to the low-income markets because it was a faster and more cost-effective way to roll out lines to those areas," says Jezouin. "The contradiction was that without the volume of users that you get in urban areas, the terminal equipment was too expensive for the low-income users to afford."

Complicating things, adds Margon of Cape Range Wireless, was the tendency of carriers to concentrate their network buildouts--including WLL--in the big cities. "In Asia most carriers have been working on developing urban and high-density areas, because that's where the revenue was," he says, "so there's still a major need for rural and remote connectivity."

Indeed, the sheer lack of connectivity in many markets indicates that demand for WLL is as strong as ever, and many wireless vendors haven't given up on trying to find the right technological innovation and business case to meet that demand--even if it means applying older WLL technologies in new ways.

Limited appeal

Limited mobility is possibly the most visible example of this at the moment, thanks mainly to China Telecom's Little Smart service. Based mostly on classic PHS-WLL (which is already in use in 20 countries) developed into a concise, inexpensive package by UTStarcom, Little Smart offers customers a cordless handset with minimum ADPCM voice quality that can travel out of the house and around town, but nowhere else. Earlier this year, India's TRAI decided to allow basic service licensees to offer limited mobility services, most of which are based on CDMA-WLL, which has already been deployed in a number of service areas for a few years now.

The limited mobility option seems to make sense in a world where cell phones outnumber fixed lines in more and more markets, while fixed-line counts even in highly developed markets are shrinking. That's assuming the regulator allows it, however. Limited mobility raises several regulatory issues, from spectrum availability to license stipulations, depending on whether a regulator judges limited mobility to be in direct competition with cellular, as cellcos often claim. Even where limited mobility is allowed, its impact on cellular is debatable--in China, Little Smart has drawn over 5 million subscribers, while cellcos China Mobile and China Unicom have over 180 million cellular users between them.

Those kinds of numbers may suggest it would be easier to put local loop buildouts on the back burner and just sell everyone mobile phones. The trouble is that cell phone packages are generally more expensive than basic fixed line connections once you figure in the cost of the terminal and all of the airtime and SMS charges.