Spike Snares Danish Contract
By Jeanie Stokes
from the May 21, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
The race to deploy broadband access across Europe has caught the attention of New Hampshire-based Spike Broadband Systems Inc. Spike won a $335 million contract to deploy a nationwide broadband fixed wireless network in Denmark for Sonofon, Denmark's second largest telecommunications company. The five-year contract, along with an unnamed systems integrator, is valued at a total of about $400 million, and is the largest deployment of its kind announced so far.
Fixed wireless access is expected to take a large piece of Europe's broadband market because of the scarcity of viable alternatives, according to a recent report from the Strategis Group. The industry consultant forecasts the fixed wireless market in Europe will reach $8.6 billion in annual revenue by 2006.
European fixed wireless operators have altered their business plans significantly following the 1998 collapse of Ionica plc and its wireless local loop strategy, Strategis says. U.K.-based Ionica, a significant customer of Nortel Networks, failed in October 1998 after winning only about 62,000 customers in its attempt to provide viable local exchange competition to monopoly British Telecommunications plc.
Now, operators "are cherry-picking the key telecom customers to minimize infrastructure spend and maximize telecom revenues, making full use of the technology's key advantages: high scalability and quick deployment," says Jack Saunders, Strategis European director.
The technology also has been slow to deploy because by the time governments awarded fixed wireless licenses, providers began to run out of money and the capital markets turned sour.
Sonofon, which is owned jointly by BellSouth International and Norwegian telecom giant Telenor, has about 966,000 mobile wireless customers. Its fixed wireless deployment is designed to reach 95 percent of Denmark's population with broadband data and video. It also includes what the companies call the largest-ever end-user voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) deployment.
Nashua, N.H.-based Spike will deploy its own network system equipment in the 3.5 GHz range as well as offer consumer premise units from its Continuum product line. The company expects to make its first consumer equipment shipments in June, and install about 240 base stations in Denmark this year, says Cristian Parrino, vice president of marketing.
Spike says it also expects to announce several other large fixed wireless projects pending in Latin America during the second half of the year.
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