Trump buildings to get high-speed wireless connections

A pact between GigaBeam, Microwave Satellite Technologies (MST) and Trump properties will see ultra high-speed wireless links installed in twenty of Trump's buildings on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

The high-speed connections, as fast as 1.5Gbps, will bring to the apartment and business dwellers in the buildings VoIP, data, and even HDTV.

In October, the FCC made available 13GHz of spectrum in the 71GHz to 86GHz, the 81GHz to 86GHz, and 92GHz to 95GHz spectrums.

Lou Slaughter, chairman and CEO of GigaBeam, said that 13GHz of spectrum is 100 times more spectrum than is currently available to all of the wireless carriers.

"Because of its contiguous large blocks of spectrum, it allows us to communicate at multi-gigabit speeds," Slaughter said.

Richard Tullo, an equity research analyst at the Wall Street Transcript, said the GigaBeam would use its technology as both a last-mile solution and as a wireless backhaul for Wi-Fi or even WiMax.

"There have been a number of attempts to bridge that [last-mile] gap by wireless, and they have failed primarily because of the bandwidth limitations," said Tullo.

GigaBeam is a point-to-point technology and is in that respect similar to WiMax and other wireless solutions used to create MANs.

A wireless last-mile solution has the advantage over fiber optics of being less costly and faster to deploy. It can also be used where fiber is not a feasible solution.

The introduction of GigaBeam technology appears to be well-timed. Recently, Hossein Eslambolchi, CIO, CTO, and president of global networking technology services at AT&T, said that AT&T spends about $8.5 billion annually to license last-mile fiber from the ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers). Eslambolchi said AT&T is aggressively pursuing "other broadband wireless technologies" as a way around having to buy licenses from the ILECs.

GigaBeam will start installing the high-speed connection within the Trump International Hotel and other Trump properties this quarter. MST will then deploy additional links throughout the remainder of 2005.