Qwest Initiates Wimax Trials

July 28, 2005

Qwest, the Denver-based phone company, and Time Warner Telecom, the Douglas County provider of corporate telecommunications services, are testing WiMax in the Denver area, and will offer service to 800 customers later this year.

Their tests are part of an estimated 100 WiMax trials being conducted around the world in the second half of this year by AT&T, Sprint, British Telecom and Korea Telecom.

Qwest has already tested WiMax in a variety of terrains, including the hills of New Mexico, the office towers of Denver and the tree-filled suburbs of Boulder and Highlands Ranch, according to Qwest's chief technology officer, Balan Nair.

All those tests were done with Qwest employees and technicians. When the first WiMax-certified equipment arrives later this year, Qwest will conduct a four-month test with up to 800 bonafide customers in an unspecified town near Denver. The test will involve different radio spectrums and configurations of the WiMax modem in and around customers' homes.

Time Warner Telecom is looking at WiMax as a way to expand its range within its 44 metropolitan markets, where it has fiber connections to 5,280 buildings. The company would use these buildings as "hop-off" points for spreading its reach to other businesses.

Time Warner's WiMax test started in February and involves a WiMax antenna atop the company's headquarters. The antenna beams an 18 megabits-per-second broadband signal to locations up to 1.5 miles away, said Lenny Avalos, Time Warner's director of field engineering. The company is also preparing to test WiMax equipment in its Greenwood Village lab.

"The theory is there," Avalos said. "Now we have to translate it into reality."

Questions remain as to whether WiMax has the necessary security and speed for corporations and how it will compare price-wise to a fiber-optic line, Avalos said, as well as how much broadband small and mid-sized companies need.