5. Wireless Broadband lives!

You would think that with the big money finally getting some viable higher-bandwidth data technology to roll out, that it would be Game Over for anyone pitching alternative "wireless broadband" systems. But a cruise of the show floor found a few companies still aiming for a piece of the wireless broadband pie. These companies are not trying to compete with the cell carriers' voice-and-data offereings, but are primarily aiming at providing wireless broadband data services.

One company generating a lot of buzz was Flarion. It made its announcements in advance of the show and its booth focused on demonstrations of applications of its Flash-OFDM technology. The key elements of its pitch are low-latency, IP Quality of Service and transfer speeds around 1Mbps.

Flarion can adapt its technology to the frequencies used by any of the major cellular standards, using only two 1.25MHz slices of spectrum. The company is currently trialing its wireless broadband system with Nextel in the Raleigh-Durham, N.C. area. Flarion is interesting because, like the cell carriers, it's aiming at mobile broadband applications and potentially competes head-on with the "big boys'" plans.

Not on the show floor, but present at a pre-show press event was Navini, who is continuing to build its business. Navini's "Nomadic Broadband" system doesn't need to use any of a cell carrier's precious spectrum, but instead uses their own slice of frequencies in both licensed and unlicensed bands between 1 and 3 GHz. They claim Non-Line-of-Sight operation by using phased-array antenna technology and are adding a PC card "modem" to complement their current USB / Ethernet desktop box offering. Their current customer list includes smaller US carriers and providers in South Korea, the Netherlands, Ireland and Italy. Though Navini's system can be mobile, it's more a don't-move-very-often kind of mobile vs. a frequently-on-the-go solution.

But what about Wi-Fi based "fixed" (non-mobile) wireless broadband? I actually was surprised to see any of these companies at the show, given that they are considered part of the "competition" now that the cellular providers appear to be getting serious about higher data speeds. But Tropos Networks and BelAir Networks were there displaying their "cellular Wi-Fi" wares. Tropos recently made the news by being used by reseller Aiirmesh to "unwire" the city of Cerritos California.

By the way, I didn't find any hotspot aggregators at the show although T-Mobile's booth did pitch their T-Mobile Hotspot program. T-Mobile also