3G mobile not big enough for broadband wireless Internet, says Cisco

Cisco has dismissed Europe's forthcoming third generation cellular technology as not offering enough bandwidth for the needs of users that would be interested in its wireless Internet standard announced on Tuesday.

While Europe and the rest of the world is moving to third generation mobile telephony that promises Internet access without wires, Cisco is pushing broadband wireless using lower radio frequencies. In Europe this would be the 3.5GHz frequency, explained Steve Smith, Cisco's director of broadband wireless marketing.

"The new spectrum allocation in Europe under the 3.5GHz frequency could be used for broadband access," he said, adding that Cisco's customers are urging the industry to reach a standard for wireless Internet to drive down costs.

Cisco's standard would enable users to share 20Mbps bandwidth while third generation mobile telephony limits the industry to 2Mbps, argued Smith.

He maintained that third generation telephony targets a different market, while wireless Internet would make services currently piped from cable or digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies available via wireless technologies.

On Tuesday Cisco announced the backing of 10 partners to promote wireless Internet based on its Vector Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (VOFDM) technology.

In Europe it is working with Pace Micro Technology to develop customer premise equipment (CPE) for businesses and residential users that would be used in the same way as cable modems, providing broadband data access and telephony over the same wireless link. Initial products could be available as soon as the third quarter of 2000, explained Smith.