October 27, 2004

By Johna Till Johnson, president & chief research officer, and Robin Gareiss, principal research officer

The market is heating up for alternatives to traditional telecom services for broadband, as evidenced by:

*Recent FCC rulings that facilitate the deployment of broadband-over-power line (BPL) technology, which provides data rates of 10-20 Mbit/s across power transmission systems, thus enabling power companies to offer data services.

*The FCC decision to remove federal operations from the 1.7 GHz and potentially 90MHz spectrum, thus paving the way for widespread deployment of WiMax (802.16a-e) technology. WiMax provides data rates of 5-70 Mbit/s at distances of 1-30 miles. (Note, however, that distance and bandwidth are inversely proportional: supported data rates decrease with distance).

* Word from Intel (NASDAQ: INTCW) about an undisclosed but reportedly significant investment in ClearWire Inc., a wireless Internet provider started by telecom entrepreneur Craig McCaw that plans to deploy WiMax technology. Intel previously has committed to providing built-in WiMax capabilities for notebook computers by 2006.

The complete Impact Analysis is available to Nemertes clients. For more information, please contact Chris Zimmerman at christine@nemertes.com