The coverage area of Nextel's wireless broadband trial, now branded as Nextel Wireless Broadband service, has more than doubled since first launching in February 2004. The coverage area is now approximately 1,300 square miles and extends to Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and other neighboring communities. This expansion follows several initial success indicators from the trial, including measuring network speed, performance and customer response. The service will also begin accepting paying customers.
"The data speeds of the service are significantly faster than other wireless broadband offerings," said Scott Ellison, program director, wireless and mobile communications, IDC. "Much like how wireless phones began replacing landline phones once performance became similar, we expect much greater demand for wireless broadband service now that speeds are comparable to DSL and cable broadband connections, with the additional benefit of access while on the go."
The wireless broadband service is 50 times faster than dial-up connections and is accessible via laptop and desktop computers as well as PDAs. It offers typical downlink speeds of up to 1.5 megabits per second (mbps) with burst rates of up to 3.0 mbps. Typical uplink speeds are up to 375 kilobits per second (kbps) with burst rates of up to 750 kbps.
The broadband service is now commercially available at affordable rates to any of the more than one million people who live or work in the coverage area. It can be ordered online, via phone or at local Nextel retail stores. A local marketing and advertising campaign will begin this week to promote the service.
Nextel's high speed wireless Internet trial is also unique because it offers turn-key bundled ISP services in addition to access, including multiple e-mail accounts (up to seven), online disk storage (up to 70 megabytes) and website traffic (up to 300 megabytes per month). Additionally, it offers public, private and static IP addresses.
Until now, Nextel's wireless broadband trial was limited to a test group that included local employees of Cisco Systems, Inc., Nortel Networks and IBM among others. These users have provided very positive feedback about the value of the service, including quality and performance.
"The service is allowing me to be remote, be productive and be highly accessible to my team and my clients. My job is very demanding and requires 24-7 access to the Internet and to our remote support infrastructure. Furthermore, many aspects of my job require that I leave the office to increase my productivity. I can even work from my favorite coffee shop with speeds comparable to a cable modem," said Matt Brown, a Nextel Wireless Broadband service trial user and director of enterprise integration and database operations, MercuryMD, Inc.
"It follows me wherever I go with the immediacy and speed that are critical for my work. For example, it allowed me to instant message a six-megabyte presentation directly from my car after I received an urgent request. I parked on the side of the road in the midst of gridlock traffic, pulled out my laptop and easily sent the presentation within minutes," said David Stafford, a Nextel Broadband service trial user and IT analyst, Cisco Systems.
The high speed wireless Internet service is available in four different price plans to meet users' varying needs such as speed, number of e-mail accounts and amount of online disk storage. Costs will include a monthly service fee (ranging from $34.99 to $74.99 depending on the plan) and a one-time equipment fee, for either a PC card for laptop computers or a wireless modem for desktop computers (specially priced at $100 for early sign-up).
Nextel Wireless Broadband service uses Flarion Technologies' FLASH-OFDM technology, which supplies highly secure broadband access in addition to fast network speeds.