The first broadband wireless revolution flamed out as quickly as it started, and many of the memorable names from that era — Teligent, WinStar, Advanced Radio Telecom — won't be back anytime soon. However, another is resurfacing this week, as XO Holdings christens a new broadband wireless subsidiary with a name direct from its own past — Nextlink.

The new Nextlink will pursue a three-pronged broadband wireless service strategy that will reach into at least 75 major markets in the U.S. to deliver wireless backhaul capacity, business services to large enterprises and alternative ingress/egress communications capabilities to government facilities.

In doing so, its two biggest weapons will be two assets that have been collecting dust on a shelf for the last six years: LMDS spectrum licenses in the range of 28 GHz to 31 GHz for those 75 markets and a company name that started with the founding of Nextlink Communications by Craig McCaw in the 1990s but was retired in 2000 when the company changed its name to XO Communications as part of a strategic redirection. Perhaps more surprising, XO Holdings was able to hold onto both of the assets for more than a half decade characterized first by a savage industry downturn and more recently by cautious growth and an emerging wave of mergers and acquisitions.

“XO has had the assets going back to 1999, before it became XO,” said Tom Cady, president of the company's Nextlink unit. “The company felt it was the right time and the right place to pull these assets off the shelf.”

A whole community of WiMAX and other broadband wireless companies would tend to agree — though Nextlink has shied away from much mention of WiMAX in its re-launch. There are no current plans for a WiMAX profile to fit the spectrum that the company owns, and Cady said Nextlink will monitor the WiMAX trend from a distance while evaluating future plans.

Still, broadband wireless service providers are now into their third full year of an increasingly strong resurgence. The role that the technology played in disaster recovery following Hurricane Katrina recently helped boost its reputation, but the overall increasing acceptance of wireless as a reliable service also has stoked the trend. In addition, Homeland Security legislation now requires government buildings to have alternative ingress/egress communications access, which plays to the strengths of the technology.

Meanwhile, Nextlink plans to focus intently, though not exclusively, “on the middle mile, as opposed to the last mile,” Cady said. The provider enters the backhaul market at a time when broadband wireless options already account for much of the backhaul applications in Europe, and their potential in the U.S. is emerging.

Cady pointed to 3G data and content trends as a primary driver for a heightened need for more backhaul capacity than mobile carriers currently can get from T-1s. Industry evidence backs up that reasoning — Cingular Wireless reported in its first-quarter earnings last week that overall average revenue per user (ARPU) fell, but data ARPU increased by more than 40%.

The backhaul market is tightly competitive, with traditional wireline carriers and vendor improving their existing T-1 options, and other wireless providers vying to replace them.

Cady claimed Nextlink will have an edge not only with the quantity of its spectrum but also with its potential to work with parent XO to package wireless and wireline links.

ONLINE

XO has moved its up-market voice-over-IP service to a nationwide platform. Read more about XO's VoIP strategy on our VoIP one-stop.
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