NextWeb, California's largest broadband wireless carrier, announced its new ConT1nuity Business Assurance Service at last week's WCA Symposium and Business Expo in San Jose, Calif. The service is an effort to expand the utility of broadband wireless by promoting it as a reliable redundant technology to wireline, but there is nothing else about NextWeb's strategy for the coming year that will keep broadband wireless in the background.

The service consists of a wide area network edge router — the NextWeb ConT1nuity router — that manages both NextWeb's broadband wireless services and a business customer's existing wireline broadband service, such as a T-1 line or DSL. The solution promises the aggregated bandwidth of both connections, while positioning the wireless service as a “fail-over” to wireline, according to Eric Warren, director of marketing and business development for NextWeb.

“Broadband wireless traditionally couldn't make claims of reliability,” said Graham Barnes, CEO of NextWeb. “As a broadband wireless provider, you could go out there and look like Pac Bell. Now we're proving we can do that job.”

Though Barnes and Warren said ConT1nuity is foremost positioned as a redundancy solution, they acknowledged that the company hopes to benefit from the marketplace education the solution will provide.

“Not everyone is comfortable with broadband wireless yet, and this is a way to go after the more conservative and more risk-averse customers,” Barnes said. “Certainly, some customers will drop their broadband wireline service as a result, but that's not the whole reason we're doing this.”

The service is based on an edge router provided by vendor Xroads.

“It's a box that can load-share and set this up as a redundant connection,” Barnes said.

Warren added that NextWeb is continuing to evaluate edge routers from other vendors.

In addition to the new service, Barnes and Warren told Telephony that NextWeb, which has grown through acquisition during the last few years to establish the largest broadband wireless coverage map in California, is ready to begin a strategy of organic growth. The company plans to expand outside of California starting in the first quarter, initially launching service in Las Vegas, a market in which it immediately will become the largest broadband wireless player.

Las Vegas was chosen for its geographical proximity to NextWeb's core market, as well as its rich base of potential business customers, Barnes said. NextWeb will continue to look at markets for further organic growth, most likely in the western U.S. However, the company won't close its mind to acquisition — it also is eyeing some markets in the eastern U.S. that it may enter through acquisition.

“In the past, we've grown by acquisition, and now we doing some organic growth,” Barnes said. “In the future, we'll probably do a bit of each where it makes sense.”

Among other expansion efforts, Fremont, Calif.-based NextWeb also will pursue a round of debt financing very soon, its first funding round in about two years. Though Barnes declined to divulge specifics about the amount of financing NextWeb will raise, he said the company usually focuses on small amounts it can immediately invest.

The coming year also will witness the efforts of NextWeb and other Bay Area broadband wireless carriers to franchise their innovative spectrum-sharing model, the Bay Area Network Consortium (BANC).

Barnes said BANC, a model under which carriers avoid disagreements and confusion by sharing information about unlicensed spectrum that's available or in use in a particular market, recently earned favorable reviews from FCC Chairman Michael Powell. BANC members hope to hold workshops in other cities that will help explain the BANC concept to carriers and other users of unlicensed spectrum in those markets.