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European Access Providers (EAP) announced on Thursday that it had plans to launch a new broadband wireless DSL network into the Dublin market. The new services, according to the company, will be targeted at small and medium businesses and will offer users connection speeds of up to 512kbps in its initial roll out, with a potential to increase access speeds to 1mbps by the end of the year.
Currently EAP is in the process of closing its first round of funding worth "a couple of million euros" according to one of the firm's directors and a former Formus executive, Charlie Ardagh. He said the company expected to close the round of funding in the next few weeks, and would begin trials of the service next month. The full EAP broadband solution is expected be launched by the end of March, Ardagh told ElectricNews.Net.
Pricing and product names for the service have not yet been released, but the company says it will target dial-up and ISDN users and pricing will be "competitive" with Eircom's expected ADSL price of EUR99. Eircom's wired ADSL service, I-stream, is currently not available due to a row between the telecom and the ODTR over wholesale prices.
EAP was the joint-venture partner of Formus Communications Ireland, a company that launched Ireland's first broadband wireless service in October of 2000. Formus subsequently closed in March of 2001 after it ran out of funds with the loss of 71 jobs. According to Ardagh, EAP was established in 1996 by Charlie and his brother Rory Ardagh and was the vessel that brought the Denver-based Formus Communications to Ireland.
"We anticipate remaining quite small initially," Ardagh told ElectricNews.Net. "We will be rolling out services in Dublin, and plan to expand slowly, possibly into other cites around the country by the year's end." The company currently employs five and hopes to expand to as many as 30 over the next 18 months, but Ardagh says that the business plans to outsource where possible in order to keep costs down
"We have spent our time since March last, putting this new broadband service offering together, as we know the demand is there, and that the market urgently needs this type of affordable, fast access to the Internet," Ardagh claims.
When the network goes live, customers will connect their computers to the EAP network via an antenna, called a "Speed Box" which is placed on the customer's roof. It will wirelessly connect to an EAP base station, a number of which are located around the city, which are in turn connected through the EAP network to the Internet.
Although Formus failed in Ireland, EAP cites the success of this type of broadband service around the world. There are almost 800 wireless Internet operators in the US and a few in Europe. Some European success stories cited by EAP include Tele2 in the UK and Skybernet in Belgium. Indeed Tele2 has had some success, announcing last month that it planned to offer services in 40 UK cites by next year. The company already has services in 15 cities with service due to commence in two more over the next month.
In fact Cahners In-Stat Group says that annual fixed wireless broadband service provider revenues worldwide will exceed USD3.2 billion by 2005, up from USD324 million in 2000. The US based research company estimates the worldwide fixed wireless broadband subscriber base, as of mid 2001, was over 210,000, including business and residential customers. "Pent-up demand for high-speed Internet access, coupled with the slow roll out of wired broadband services and their limited reach, will help drive that number way up and propel fixed wireless broadband revenues to increase ten-fold by 2005," In-Stat projects.
But there are some drawbacks, according to In-Stat, including signal degradation due to inclement weather, requirement for a clear line of sight, and a lack of awareness among potential customers.
Although analysts like In-Stat say the technology will thrive, at least two prominent fixed wireless providers, Teligent and Winstar, have both filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors in 2001, casting serous doubt on the industry.
Moreover, earlier this month the UK government restarted its 28Ghz wireless broadband licence auction, only to find that no bidders were interested despite the reserve limit for bids set at STG2 million or less. The fiasco follows an earlier failed auction in November 2000, which only saw successful bids for 16 of the 42 licences on offer.
Some analysts and industry watchers are now suggesting that the UK government should just give the remaining licences away, even if means compensating those who paid a total of STG38 million in the first auction.
EAP is at http://www.eap.ie
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