Frequency fliers

  • By Eric Fetters / Herald Writer
  • Sunday, August 29, 2004 9:00pm
  • Business

Churchill, located on the edge of the Arctic Circle in northern Manitoba, Canada, is not a high-tech haven.

The town of about 1,000 residents is world-famous for its polar bears, which roam freely in the area.

But Churchill is also a testing ground for WiMax – the next generation of wireless, broadband technology being offered by a local company.

Vern Fotheringham, Adaptix’s chief executive officer, sees WiMax’s potential to allow people to make phone calls, watch videos and browse the Web, all wirelessly and at blistering speeds.

“Suddenly, the true convergence promise we’ve been talking about over the past decade would become a true reality,” he said.

Adaptix introduced itself to the world a few weeks ago after attracting more than $10 million from Baker Capital, a New York-based venture firm. The company, which formed out of the ashes of another wireless broadband firm, moved its offices to Bothell about four months ago. It also has a manufacturing facility in Shanghai, China.

The company is working on a system that takes the advantages of Wi-Fi – a high-speed, wireless Internet technology that has exploded in popularity the past two years – and pushes it further.

Wi-Fi systems, technically known as 802.11 networks, operate in an unlicensed part of the radio spectrum that usually is limited in coverage to a few hundred feet.

WiMax, also known as 802.16 networks, can operate on both licensed and unlicensed frequencies at download speeds of 2.5 megabits per second or more. That’s about as fast as Comcast’s cable broadband service.

The real advantage to WiMax, however, is its range.

In general, it is not limited by line of sight. That means with antennas in multiple locations, a WiMax system could cover an entire metropolitan area, allowing people to use it at work, at home and in the car in between. A user would need only a small module attached to the computer to use the broadband service.

Churchill, the Manitoba town where the technology behind Adaptix’s system has been in operation for about two years, isn’t a metropolitan area. But for most residents, dial-up connections provided their only access to the Internet before WiMax arrived.

Mike Iwanowsky, president of the volunteer-run Churchill Community Network, said about 80 subscribers are using the wireless broadband network. The WiMax base station and antenna, mounted on a grain elevator, hook up to a T-1 line that runs into the town.

The WiMax system has worked reliably, Iwanowski said, even during the worst winter weather.

“I’ve been quite impressed. We’ve had situations with complete whiteouts and 30- or 40-mile-per-hour winds, and it’s worked,” he said.

The WiMax system only needs to cover a radius of about 11/2 miles in Churchill.

“But we have had it working and functioning for up to four miles,” he said.

Adaptix’s system will next be used by Phonevision Australia to bring voice and data services to rural cities in Australia and New Zealand. The system already is in use in China, and talks are ongoing in other places, said Jim Miller, Adaptix’s vice president of global sales and business development.

He mentioned that South Korea, one of the most wired nations in the world for Internet, is getting ready to deploy a WiBro system, which is similar to WiMax.

“That will be the perfect test bed to prove out what this technology can mean to a population that already is broadband savvy,” Miller said.

Fotheringham and Miller said WiMax may have to establish itself overseas to raise interest in the United States, where cellphone carriers and broadband providers already are fiercely competing for customers.

In the meantime, Fotheringham also likes the stage Adaptix is at in relation to other emerging WiMax companies.

The core of Adaptix’s system was developed by Hui Lui, a University of Washington electrical engineering professor. Because the system is software-based, upgrading it would require no new hardware once that initial part is purchased. Instead, a user would just upgrade software – a huge advantage over most existing wireless communications systems, Fotheringham said.

That innovative software-based system also gives Adaptix an advantage against competitors.

“The primary difference between them and us is we have a whole lot of intellectual property in the process of getting patented,” Miller said.

Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.

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