AirFiber Using Lasers in New Telecom System
Upstart AirFiber Inc. of San Diego will announce today that it has developed a new high-bandwidth wireless optical network that has won backing from Nortel Networks, which will sell the system to its phone company customers.
AirFiber’s OptiMesh technology, quietly under development for nearly two years, shoots large amounts of information through the air using eye-safe laser beams aimed at rooftop transceivers.
The technology can provide fiber-like broadband capacity in buildings without a fiber-optic connection. The light waves can carry voice, data and multimedia at speeds of up to 622 megabits per second (more than 400 times the speed of a corporate T1 line), according to company executives.
Under a new partnership agreement with Nortel, privately held AirFiber will supply its OptiMesh wireless optics equipment and Nortel will distribute and support the system under its own brand. The deal represents a key endorsement from one of the world’s largest telecommunications equipment companies.
AirFiber sees the technology as a better way to provide the so-called “last-mile” link between buildings and the high-capacity data networks that typically loop through cities without making many direct connections to buildings and their tenant-customers.
The company’s technology--a variant of the kinds of “free-space” optical networks used by the military--is being tested by carriers in Dallas, Tokyo and Madrid, with additional tests set for Denver; Portland, Ore.; Washington, D.C.; and Brussels. The first commercial network is slated for launch in July or August.
Some companies, among them Winstar and Teligent, are selling broadband service using licensed radio spectrum to forge wireless links to buildings and customers. But ultimately, even those carriers could use an AirFiber-style system to supplement or extend their service.
“Broadband is the thing . . . and [telecommunications] operators need a whole range of things in their tool kit to provide it,” said Claude Romans, who studies access networks for the telecommunications research firm RHK in South San Francisco.
Investors, meanwhile, have been scouring technology circles for young firms with promising network advances.
One such company, Seattle-based TeraBeam Networks, also has developed an over-the-air optical network. Recently, Lucent Technologies invested $450 million in cash, manpower and assets in a partnership with TeraBeam.
Lucent rival Nortel has latched onto AirFiber, investing in the company during an August financing that brought $37.5 million from Nortel, Qualcomm Inc., and venture firms Enterprise Partners and Foundation Capital.
The 87-employee AirFiber was founded in May 1998 and builds on research conducted at UC San Diego. The OptiMesh network includes roof-mounted transceivers that resemble the “R2D2” robot from Star Wars movies, with adjustable pairs of lenses mounted into rotating turrets encased in a clear shield.
Using a handful of the transceivers, also known as nodes, arranged to form an invisible mesh “umbrella” of coverage, data streams can hop along rooftops up to 500 meters apart before connecting to a traditional fiber network.
AirFiber’s technology requires an unblocked path between nodes, and must also be adjusted in fog--which acts as a brick wall for light waves, much as heavy rain can affect radio signals.
“This is going to be huge, because the demand for bandwidth is really insatiable,” said Jim Dunn, AirFiber’s president and chief executive. “We’re migrating rapidly toward an information economy where bandwidth is a staple.”
