Verizon Communications’ subsidiary Verizon Avenue launched the carrier’s first broadband wireless trial in the small rural community of Grundy, Va., population 1200.

In a flood zone on the banks of the Levisa River, Grundy is using federal dollars to relocate the community to the opposite bank of the river where it will be protected from floodwaters. In doing so Verizon will have to rebuild telecom infrastructure in the town. While Verizon plans use of existing copper and adding new infrastructure to offer DSL, carrier officials said the opportunity seemed perfect to attempt a small fixed wireless pilot using Alvarion BreezeAccess VL gear, said Kelly Dunne, vice president for Verizon Avenue.

"We’re looking at it as a supplemental technology for areas that are traditionally hard to serve," Dunne said. "We want to get a better understanding for what the customer demand for this technology will be."

Verizon will be using unlicensed spectrum at 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz to connect homes and businesses in line of sight of the base station. In addition it will use 900 MHz equipment to link harder-to-reach homes without a clear line-of-sight. Alvarion said it would deploy only a few base stations to blanket the entire community. While the BreezeAccess equipment is an earlier generation than the WiMAX certified equipment expected to be released next year, Dunne said one of the reasons the company chose Alvarion is for its migration path to WiMAX.

For Alvarion the deal, while small, is its first major trial with a major U.S. carrier, the significance of which is not lost on the vendor.

"Of all people, they [Verizon] can validate this business model," said Patrick Leary, assistant vice president of marketing for Alvarion. "If you look at the state of the broadband industry, the low hanging fruit has all been picked. We have to look to the next set of service providers."