But is it rock solid?
Expect the typical hiccups of an emerging market. And don't forget the fixed-wireless wild cardâ€"-keeping the line of sight clear.
Of course, most wireless providers are new players in an emerging market. As you'd expect, this has its downside. It's still not possible to accurately measure reliability rates. While service providers claim to offer "the five nines," or 99.999 percent reliability, you typically won't find these promises in the contract you sign.
It's not uncommon for fixed-wireless service customers to experience minor interruptions. Early on, the IBM Southeast Employees' Federal Credit Union experienced about six incidents of dropped service, three of which were the credit union's bloopers and three of which originated on Fuzion's end. But Blakely says Fuzion notified him about the problems immediately and the service was back up and running within 20 minutes.
The wild card in reliability is keeping lines of sight clear, says James Mendelson, an analyst for the Strategis Group, which specialises in wireless broadband. Some wireless technologies handle obstructions better than others.
MMDS, which operates at a lower frequency, typically penetrates foliage. And it weathers thunderstorms. Higher-frequency LMDS is more prone to interruptions. And no frequency can penetrate buildings or solid objects.
Steel Digital Studios, an e-commerce development company, has been using fixed wireless since the summer of 2000. While overall service from Austin-based Shield Networks has been stellar, says Steel Digital's Bill Cutshall, there has been one major line-of-sight issue.
Every day at about 4:45 p.m., Cutshall says, Internet service was interrupted. "It turned out there was a lot of construction going on in downtown Austin and a crane would be parked in our line of sight every day at the same time. It took 24 hours for the company to correct the problem."
