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Leap slams ODTR on fixed wireless 
Thursday, August 01 2002
by Ciaran Buckley


Leap Broadband claims that a recent decision by the ODTR to deregulate the
fixed-wireless broadband market in Ireland will create a 'wireless wasteland.' 



Leap Broadband was responding to an order by Etain Doyle, the Telecom Regulator,
which has deregulated the fixed-wireless access (FWA) broadband market, removing
barriers to entry into the market.  



Rory Ardagh, a director of Leap Broadband has called on the Minister for
Communications and Natural Resources, to reverse the ODTR's order. Claiming that
a deregulated market will not provide the return-on-investment required by new
entrants to invest in equipment and to realise economies of scale. He has also
called upon Minister Dermot Ahern to provide wireless licenses to new entrants,
to ensure the development of a healthy fixed-wireless broadband market in
Ireland. 



Ardagh is also seeking an inquiry by the Competition Authority into the actions
of the ODTR in allowing Eircom and Chorus to "hoard" the licences that they
already have, without actually making wireless broadband widely available.
"Eircom and Chorus have six broadband wireless licences," Ardagh claimed in a
statement, "But have failed to roll-out a useful service. As a consequence,
market competition and broadband are not being developed as originally promised."




Leap Broadband currently provides fixed-wireless broadband with a basic telecoms
licence, rather than a wireless licence. 



Since local phone service providers and cable television providers are in the
best position to provide wired broadband services, new entrants to the broadband
market have looked to wireless access as the best way to provide competing
broadband services to homes and small businesses. 



"In a protected market environment we could use higher bandwidth equipment and
a provide a greater guaranteed range," said Ardagh while speaking to
ElectricNews.Net. "Our current equipment can provide a range of up to five
kilometres, but in a protected market we could provide up to 8MB/s over a range
of 17 kilometres."



Ardagh believes that better equipment and greater range would allow Leap to
realise economies of scale and to provide wireless access at a lower cost to
consumers and to compete with wired broadband.  "Nobody will benefit from
this decision, it's effectively a fixed-wireless broadband wasteland scenario,"
he said. 





The decision by the ODTR is in contrast to that of UK authorities, who are
currently engaged in the licensing process for 3.5GHz wireless access. Since
wireless traffic requires discrete frequencies, the order specifies that all
base-stations providing FWA services must be registered with the ODTR, which it
says will enable operators deploying the equipment to co-operate with each other
using the available frequency. 



Ardagh dismissed the ODTR's idea of co-operation among competing operators to
share frequencies as "a fantasy."