French startup Bluwan has finally launched two weeks ago in Milano. Founded in 2005 by former Thomson/Thales executives, the company was kind of acting in stealth mode until the FTTH Council Europe' Conference recently held in the Fashion' s european capital city.
Here's the promotional video of their unique solution, so-called FTTA Fiber-Through-The-Air. Don't be confused: there's no fiber here but the trunk network. There's even no laser beam as the video may suggest - remember FSO Free Space Optics ? Actually, Bluwan has developped a quite interesting multiplexing technology that allows "the aggregation of multiple independent channels (modems) through [our] wideband radios and antennas onto a single air interface."
Being involved with Ultra-Broadband deployment in Rural areas, I'm convinced such a solution must be part of the portfolio of networks operators : faster and cheaper to install than wireline/optics, Radio fits well with mainstream needs in most parts of the country but dense areas. What mainstream needs ? TriplePlay. Telephone, Internet, Television. Downstream apps, actually. Because the only yet radically crippling limit of this FTTA technology is the rather impossible symmetrical mode - as with most of the Wireless Access technologies to date.
Post-scriptum : Among all the ultra-broadband wireless technologies available today for access networks, I do prefer Free-Space Optics. Simply because it's way safier than Radio in regards of signals' s confidentiality. Of course, one may be able to tap in the laser beam to "listen" the actual communications. However, such a hack is much more difficult to achieve, compare to pure radio comms. In the case of BluWan, the interesting thing is the fact that its founders come from one of the key suppliers of the Defense/Military sector. Hence I would rather double-check the security issues with BluWan' engineers before deploying my first FTTA link...
