Today XO Holdings (news, filings) unexpectedly announced an expansion of its broadband wireless offerings in the Washington DC area, including a new hub in Tyson’s Corner. I say ‘unexpectedly’ because since last summer when XO reabsorbed Nextlink into the rest of its business, we haven’t heard a peep about it. The implication was that Nextlink had served its purpose, which was to satisfy usage requirements in order to renew the spectrum licenses, and was being de-emphasized. However, apparently Nextlink still lives somewhere in there, at least in the DC area.
According to the release, the DC expansion is targeted at businesses and enterprises seeking either connectivity or redundancy from 10Mbps to 1Gbps anywhere in the DC metro area, roughly in a polygon bounded by Dulles International Airport, Lanham MD, Rockville and Beltsville MD, and Mount Vernon, Virginia. Curiously, what they didn’t mention at all (yet?) was wireless backhaul, which might seem an obvious target given the currently incessant drumbeat of smartphone and now iPad news.
So does this mean Nextlink is about to be reborn? Is LMDS spectrum finally ready to blossom from a footnote into a revenue generating asset? Hmmm, that is probably premature at best but stranger things have happened. My guess is that this is one of those few markets in which they made some inroads in their earlier roll-out, and they are testing the waters to see if they are a little less chilly yet. Perhaps they’ve picked up a few customers in the past year as well, anybody know?
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XO has had a Fixed Wireless present in DC – Northern VA markets for quite some time. Nothing new. IF you ask me, they were just looking for a reason to make a press release, to be relevent in the new administration era. They’ve had their licenses with equipment deployed and capable. But at the end of the day we’ve all learned, in a served market, it takes more than a network to make sales. It takes relationships with decission makers, which isn’t as easy to get, as stock holders like to think.
Rob,
Thank you for your interest in our press release. I have been an avid fan of your site and was extremely pleased to see your comments regarding XO’s new hub launch in Tyson’s Corner, VA. Hopefully I can shed some light on this project, as well as our wireless capabilities nationally.
XO’s LMDS capability is a key component of our network in serving the needs of businesses. Not only does our LMDS business live, but it’s a thriving element of our business nationwide and is seeing new demand in meeting the Business Continuity requirements of businesses.
The DC/VA/MD metro market is currently served by two, full service wireless hubs located at 1120 Vermont in DC and 11710 Plaza America in Reston, VA. As mentioned in the press release, a new hub is currently under construction and will be located in the heart of Tyson’s Corner. The main focus of Tyson’s hub is to provide COOP Planning and Disaster Recovery services to an area of NoVA that is continuing to experiencing rapid growth. Large construction projects in the Tyson’s area demand that companies address possible communications and power outages and implement solutions to mitigate these threats.
The Tyson’s hub will mirror the same capabilities as all of the deployed XO hubs nationwide; 10Mb through 1 GigE on the Ethernet side, DS3 through OC12 on TDM/SONET, as well as hybrid TDM/Ethernet solutions to address both data and voice requirements.
From a national perspective, XO continues to focus on utilizing its wireless transport capabilities to address the market requirements for COOP/DR, optical and Ethernet network extensions, as well as the mobile backhaul market. We currently have 36 full service wireless hubs deployed across the country, as well as the capability to launch wireless services from any of our 3000+ XO fiber fed buildings across 75 of the top US markets.
Thanks again for your interest.
Joe Vazquez/XO Communications
Your company is a joke and the laughing stock of the Telecom World. How are your stock options fairing with Carl pulling the strings?