Fremont, Calif.-based NextWeb, which provides service to more than 2,500 businesses in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Francisco, recently raised $3.5 million in new financing to fund expansion.
Today it’s doing it. NextWeb said they will buy 1st Universe to strengthen its network, and prepare for WiMAX. NextWeb claims the deal is the largest cash acquisition in the fixed-broadband space. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Founded in 1999, 1st Universe, of Huntington Beach, Calif., was an early entrant in the fixed-wireless space and has been a strong competitor in the Southern California. 1st Universe operates its primary data center in Irvine, Calif., and has hundreds of business customers ranging from enterprises to small offices.
Their system delivers 10 Mbps over the air, and operates in either the 5.8 GHz ISM band or the 5.3 GHz U-NII band.
NextWeb’s high-speed broadband service plans start at $159 a month for up to 3Mbps, six times faster than comparably priced DSL service plans in the area.
NextWeb base stations are located on high-rise building rooftops, mountain top towers, and other strategic locations. Each unit typically allows a ten-mile range, giving a fully provisioned base station coverage over a 300 square mile area.
NextWeb uses equipment from Axxcelera (right), with roof-mounted base stations covering a three mile radius, supporting 250 subscriber units per sector. User throughput up to 25 Mbps, can be dynamically allocated among users, upstream or downstream.
NextWeb has signed a VoIP partnership with Level 3 Communications and will launch a WiMax service for its 2,000 business customers in the middle of the year using unlicensed 5.8GHz bands.
The company has licenses for 18 GHz and its backhaul links are high capacity, at 100 Mbps or 155 Mbps depending on the location. Each node has backhaul from at least two different directions. They deploy a combination of unlicensed (2.4/5.8 GHz) and licensed band radio technology. Typically, wireless licensed-band links are used for backhaul. NextWeb has a key relationship with one of its investors, Oakland-based nonprofit health industry giant Kaiser Permanente.
NextWeb is an active member in the Broadband Access Network Coordination group (BANC) of several regions and actively works with other operators to coordinate frequencies in the 5.8GHz band.
NextWeb and SkyPipeline merged last year in a deal valued at more than $25 million. The two privately owned, California-based companies created the largest wireless Internet service provider (WISP) in the country.
NextWeb should not be confused with NextNet, the hardware supplier for Craig McCaw’s Clearwire.
Clearwire has raised $260 million in a debt offering from 31 undisclosed investors, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission and could raise an additional $260 million through the sale of senior notes and warrants.
Clearwire is partnering with Bell Canada to provide voice calls over its network and with Intel for WiMax gear.
Clearwire, a 500-employee Kirkland company, offers WiMax-like service in 16 U.S. cities and dozens of other cities around the world.
In related news:
- “Pre-WiMax” operator TowerStream and VOIP provider Vonage are packaging combined Voice over IP and high-speed data over their wireless “pre-WiMax” network. The Vonage-over-TowerStream offering will be available in all of TowerStream’s markets, which also include Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Oakland. TowerStream says it is able to offer the service because of the quality-of-service functions built into the pre-WiMax Aperto gear that it uses.
- Airspan Networks, a provider of WipLL and pre-WiMax gear, announced today that it has signed a System Integrator agreement with mmwave Technologies, covering the resale of Airspan’s broadband wireless products in Canada.Airspan’s WipLL product line, has a unique feature of frequency hopping, scalability, and QoS for VoIP services in the 900MHz and 3.5GHz space. Their gear is available in both licensed bands (700MHz, 2.5GHz, 1.7-1.9GHz and 3.4-3.8GHz) and unlicensed bands (900MHz, 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz).
Broadband Wireless Magazine lists the largest Wireless ISPs in the United States.
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