EMBARGOED UNTIL FEB. 9, 1999
MEDIA CONTACTS:
For Virginia Tech, Heather McElrath, (540) 231-5808
[email protected]
For Wavtrace, Kimberly Tassin or Stacy Hendricks
The KMC Group (425) 450-9965
[email protected] or [email protected]
VIRGINIA TECH BEGINS DEPLOYMENT OF WIRELESS BROADBAND NETWORK
Wavtrace, Inc. of Bellevue, Wash. to supply transmission equipment
BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Feb. 9, 1999 -- Virginia Tech today announced that it will begin limited deployment of high-bandwidth wireless technology, or LMDS, in the Blacksburg area in early May. This deployment, made possible through an agreement with Wavtrace, a Washington-based company supplying the technology, represents the nation's first university/private sector partnership for the deployment of a point-to-multipoint LMDS network. LMDS (local multipoint distribution service) is a wireless communications service capable of delivering two-way, high- speed, data, voice and video traffic. Virginia Tech won four LMDS licenses in last year's government auctions. The transmission equipment used at the Blacksburg site is Wavtrace's PTM 1000 system, the first wireless broadband delivery system based on time division duplexing (TDD) technology. TDD allows for transmit and receive functions to occur on one channel, a process more efficient than what is possible with the traditional airlink technology, which requires two channels, one for transmit and one for receive. Virginia Tech officials saw the LMDS auction as an important research and economic development opportunity. "We predicted that only high-population urban markets would be of interest to the companies that participated in the auction," said Judy Lilly, director of Virginia Tech's Communications Network Services division. This proved to be true as over 100 rural market areas across the U.S. attracted no commercial bidders. "Consequently, we felt important research and economic development issues would go unexplored unless we became involved."
"Virginia Tech chose to take an active leadership role to help ensure LMDS technology will be available and cost-effective to the region's citizens and businesses," continued Lilly, "especially for those in rural areas with lower population densities where cost-effectiveness is critical." Wavtrace's system, which allows for efficient use of spectrum using TDD technology, provides Virginia Tech a highly cost-effective way to explore such service. "Virginia Tech's local research testbed in Blacksburg will be used as a model for replicable deployments throughout the rest of the license area." "We are very pleased to be working with Virginia Tech, a well-respected leader in the development of new wireless technologies," said Thomas T. van Overbeek, CEO of Wavtrace. "We expect this project will demonstrate that a wireless solution for delivery of broadband services has wide application and that service delivery can be economically viable in urban or rural environments."
LEADING THE NATION Virginia Tech is taking an interdisciplinary approach to the project by utilizing the expertise of faculty and staff from Virginia Tech's Information Systems, Communications Network Services, and The Center for Wireless Telecommunications divisions. The project involves university geographers, economists, business and marketing faculty, electrical engineers and computer scientists. With this early roll-out, Virginia Tech continues to expand its already extensive communications and advanced Internet research and development capabilities such as the Blacksburg Electronic Village, the Smart Road, and Net.Work.Virginia (a statewide ATM network and nationally recognized prototype for the next-generation Internet).
ABOUT LMDS AND VIRGINIA TECH LMDS is a two-way digital wireless communications medium that can carry voice, data and video traffic. The capacity of the A-Block section of spectrum auctioned by the FCC in last year's auction is more than twice the total bandwidth of AM/FM radio, VHU/UHF television and cellular telephone combined. LMDS frequencies are relatively high in the radio spectrum, ranging from 28-31 GHz.
In early 1998, Virginia Tech became the first university in the nation to participate in a Federal Communications Commission (FCC ) spectrum auction and was awarded four LMDS licenses covering 16,507 square miles of Virginia, and portions of North Carolina and Tennessee. The region has an estimated population of 1.6 million.
ABOUT WAVTRACE
Founded in 1996, Wavtrace is a pioneer and leader in the development of wireless broadband access systems, and has developed the first point-to-multipoint millimeter wave radio system based on time division duplexing (TDD). The Wavtrace PTM 1000 connects high-speed metropolitan networks to in-building networks with the most efficient and scaleable system available today. The PTM 1000 offers service providers rapid deployment, low cost of ownership, independence from the incumbent local exchange carrier, rapid return on investment and a powerful solution for market expansion.
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