Wireless in the Local Loop (WLL), Radio Local Loop (RLL), Neighbourhood Telepoint (NT), Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), Radio Fixed Access (RFA), Radio Access Networks (RAN) are all variants of a single, simple concept: that of delivering telecommunication services to homes and other premises by radio rather than by copper wires or other cabled means (such as fibre optics). 

As distinct from Mobile radio, Radio Fixed Access, delivers fixed telecommunication services to premises rather than to personal portable terminals. Its service aims to reproduce the flexibility, quality and performance of a wired network - without the wires. 

 The benefits of RFA systems are many - some of these are:

• they allow extremely rapid deployment of service to large areas such as towns and cities from an infrastructure investment which is small compared with wired telecommunications

• the investment by the operator tends to be related to the number of enrolled customers and not to the number of customers within reach - thus dramatically improving cash flows of operators relative to networks which require copper or fibre to be run
• as the cost of electronics continues to fall - and the costs of labour for civil works continue to rise - the relative cost of RFA relative to traditional wired telephony is improving rapidly
• new telecommunications operators, presenting competition to incumbents as encourage by the European Union, can use radio service to become operational within months of receiving a licence

 However, there are potential challenges faced by developers and operators of wireless access systems. Some of the questions we can help with are:

• radio spectrum is a limited resource: what detailed planning is required to see that the spectrum assigned is used efficiently to avoid expensive network reconfiguration as the customer base and traffic increase?

• radio links are potentially less robust than their copper-wire equivalents - can effective coding and encryption systems allow them to offer reliability and security which as effective as copper wire?
• there are many standards in place for Radio Fixed Access - but which standard, which frequency band and which technology is the most appropriate in a given market place?
• there are many proprietary systems on offer - but which is the right choice for your application and your market?
• what are the benefits and drawbacks of using a mobile technology for fixed access purposes?
• what is the process of obtaining licences both as a telecommunications operator and as an operator of radio equipment?

Radio Fixed Access has been with us for several years - but only in the past two or three years has the long predicted take-off really happened. Unprecedented competition between established and new operators in Europe and America, rapidly falling prices of a growing range of RFA equipment and the growing realisation that telecommunications is an essential driver for economic development in the third world have contributed this take-off.

 Over twenty manufacturers have developed different systems addressing different markets - from long range rural telephony for developing territories where telephones are still scarce to high density European urban networks deployed by new telecommunications operators competing with former monopoly telephone companies.

Today, there are some 360 RFA systems already deployed in over 80 countries around the world, either on experimental basis or as a full commercial service. With the advent of competition in the developed markets and with the need for basic telecommunications services in less developed markets as a catalyst for economic growth we expect the number of systems to grow into thousands over the next few years.

But the equipment will continue to develop. In a few years we have seen basic analogue facilities almost totally replaced by high quality digital radio equipment for radio fixed access for telephony, fax and modems. Now the drive is for equipment to support extensive data services to be delivered by radio service - for Internet access, remote LAN operation and broadband services.

 In the developed markets, the current generation of entrepreneurial operators are those who offer alternative telephone services. Future entrepreneurs will offer a wide range of broadband services including Internet access, video for entertainment and for commercial purposes, to allow "home-working" and "telecommuting" where employees can access corporate networks as effectively from home as they can from the office and can "video conference" with their colleagues almost as if they were there.

The challenge to allow this vision is for technologies to be developed which will allow a huge amount of data to be passed in a finite amount of radio spectrum. Some of these technologies are already emerging.