Backup Solutions: Can 2.5G Networks Carry The Load?

With the Sept. 11 attacks still fresh in their minds and rising instability among wire-line carriers, IT executives and solution providers said they believe wireless may offer viable backup.

"We've had a couple of requirements come up recently where certain customers were looking for potential backup solutions," said Dan Elliott, vice president of mobile business solutions at CompuCom, Dallas. "Fixed-wireless over a [CDMA 1xRTT network would fill that void."

At the Enterprise Wireless Forum in Santa Clara last week, Nancy Bryant, CIO of 1st City Savings Federal Credit Union, Glendale, Calif., said the credit union is exploring ways to move its business-continuity and disaster-recovery solution from a handful of notebooks with Sprint CDMA wireless modems to a fixed-wireless solution over the carrier's upcoming 2.5G network.

Several power outages already have required 1st City to use wireless modems at its five branch offices, Bryant said. The outages stemmed from rolling blackouts during the California energy shortage last summer, a cut power line, and router and UPS failures. The fixed-wireless solution would provide "secondary access in times of emergency," she said.

A Sprint PCS spokeswoman said the carrier provides CDMA repeaters and base-station solutions for specific customer requests. Sprint's 2.5G network, due this summer, is based on Qualcomm's CDMA 1xRTT technology and provides a more realistic option for wireless backup than the carrier's current network, she said. The 1xRTT network will average speeds of 50 Kbps to 70 Kbps and up, while the current network offers about 28.8 Kbps.

"It's not a bad idea as long as you are talking about it as a backup solution," Elliot said of the 2.5G network option.