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BellSouth Unveils WiMAX-Like Backup Broadband Offering

6:00 am on March 22, 2006 | Category: Telecom Services, Wi-Fi, Wireless Technology

American ISP, BellSouth has announced plans to launch a 1.5 Mbps wireless broadband service for use when wired DSL networks are down.

BellSouth already offers a standalone WiMAX-like service for $69.95/month in several cities, but plans to bundle the new offering with existing broadband services at a much lower rate of just $29.95/month.

The provider says that having a working wireless broadband network in place will be very useful in future disaster recovery efforts, including hurricanes.

“Katrina was a real-life lab for us when it came to developing backup strategies,” said BellSouth executive, Michael Bowling. “But we found that customers wanted to return to their regular broadband service when things were up and running again.”

The idea of paying $69.95/month for a purely backup service is distasteful to most customers, but BellSouth is hoping that more customers will be willing to subscribe to wireless broadband when it is offered as a cheaper add-on.

The new service will be delivered over the 2.3GHz wireless frequency, making it very similar to the recently certified WiMAX wide-area radio broadband standard.

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