Across our spectrum plan, we have products that range from 2GHz to 90GHz.  At 2GHz the spectrum is omni-directional and perfect for multipoint connections and mobility. Conversely at 70/80GHz, we have hyper narrow beams that look like strings between the Campbell soup cans (with much higher capacity of course) and are a wonderful extension/compliment/alternative to fiber optic cable.

To help our customers with this rather complicated issue, GigaBeam has invested in planning tools, worked in concert with regulatory bodies globally to provide counsel on best practices and has an internal organization that specializes in system/network integration and planning so that the wireless component of any network we participate in is properly planned and executed.  We also have created a broad portfolio so that if you live in a region where one band is clogged you can choose another one.

It is all about careful planning, and while wireless can experience interference let me close with a corollary thought, which is that interference is a part of the wired industry, in a sense, as well.  Statistics show that everyday a backhoe inadvertently “interferes” with (i.e. cuts through) fiber optic cables every single day.

We champion the need for cooperation and co-existence and to that effect have created within our business a wide variety of wireless solutions where GigaBeam is a subject and technology expert.  We have also teamed and partnered with companies in the Wire-line world as we really do need each other to maximize success for our customers and for our independent businesses.

The key again is planning and using tools to protect data.  There are many arguments on this topic but if the need for security is high then information that is being transmitted should be encrypted/protected at the source and during transmission.  The good news here is that there is an entire industry that deals with security and data protection and GigaBeam is engaged with a number of the players in this space.

You see Jim is key to our making sure everything works in engineering development and is the final test and assembly supervisor in manufacturing.  He comes to us with a wealth of experience.  Jim got his first electronics experience the hard way–in the Navy–then having had a taste for hard work and discipline (or maybe just being a glutton for punishment. . .) went on to work over the course of the next 12 years for several small start up microwave radio companies, including Racon, Innova-Stratex Networks and Vectrad Networks, as an engineering and manufacturing final test technician and supervisor.  Eventually, Jim decided to take a year off to live in the woods.  I could say it was something of a Thoreau experience but I think it was more likely a Jerry Garcia experience. . .  After about a year or so of quiet living, Jim decided he rather liked working and earning money.  He happened to pick up a trade magazine, only to find an article about a Montana native son, Doug Lockie, involved in yet another start-up company, this one called GigaBeam.  Jim took a look at the website and noted that Doug was GigaBeam’s Chief Technology Officer and had graduated from the University of Montana.  That was enough for him to pick up the phone–he figured he had an opening line: “Hey I live in Montana and I see you graduated from U of Montana . . . . “

“Of course,” Jim says, “the Montana connection alone might not have been strong enough to seal the deal, but after I met Doug, we both realized we were a couple of ‘nut bags’ (i.e. “colorful” high energy people).  And, well, after you’ve worked in this industry long enough you appreciate the ‘nutty’ types.  We got along great.”  [I suppose there’s another Doug Lockie story in there . . . but we’ll save that for another day.]

What GigaBeam needed was another industry experienced person who could help to ensure a product becoming a fully tested, easily manufactured, cost effective reality–a feat that had not yet been accomplished in the industry.  Jim came on at the end of 2004.  In a couple of months, GigaBeam successfully manufactured, tested, and produced it’s first and the industry’s first commercial 70/80 GHz radio (the WiFiber II).  By the end of 2005 GigaBeam had completely designed/developed/produced and was selling/shipping it’s 2^nd generation radio (the G1.25–now, several generations later, known as the Gi-CORE), in good part because Jim rolled up his sleeves and helped the team make it happen.  He does recall many long stretches of working every day without a break while the record breaking project was in process–wonder if he longed for that cabin in the woods then . . .

Okay so Jim’s a great Engineering Associate and one of those people who ensures that GigaBeam has an outstanding product.  If we have sold it, Jim probably has touched it.  But who is this guy anyway?

I can tell you here at GigaBeam, we often think of him as our own quintessential “Happy Hippie”–he even owns a Happy Hippie T-shirt, but most days he wears tie dye, which makes me smile.  Glancing at his signature tie dyed shoelaces, I asked him what the tie dye was all about.  He said one day after getting out of the service, he was invited to an Allman Brothers concert and saw all these carefree open-minded people there and really loved the music and the crowd.  (He says “I felt like I was just like them . . .except I had a job and liked to shower.”) He said he bought his first tie dye then and hasn’t stopped going to concerts or buying tie dye since. Jim has been to over 250 concerts since 1990 and still counting, over 100 of them have been Allman Brothers with a dozen or so Grateful Dead sprinkled in for good measure.   Music, tie dye, and a magician like ability to get things working–that’s Jim in a nutshell–or should I say nut bag?

So, I introduce you all to Jim Rasmussen: our down to earth, reliable, highly experienced tech savvy “Happy Hippie,” who makes GigaBeam more colorful for his very presence.

Signed a grateful colleague and closet flower child,

Marijke

This is a real hot button for me because the power grid isn’t even 5-9’s.  There are a number of issues with this metric as follows:

1. For it to be statistically relevant it must be evaluated over years not just weeks or months.
2. Common sense should dictate that anything that is singular is susceptible to and in time likely to have some form of failure.
3. Many wireless providers make 5-9’s claims but do not properly explain what it means clearly (i.e. at what distance, under what weather conditions, etc.) and as a result an expectation is created that cannot be met.

Think of this for a moment.  If you were to encapsulate a strand of fiber cable under glass, light it up and watch it for 10 years, do you think the circuit would stay intact for all but 50 minutes in that time period?  The answer is absolutely no. The Power system itself isn’t 5-9s so this can’t be true, unless there are back up systems, redundancies and a network to ensure that when something does go wrong the customer of the service is not impacted.  And, in fact, if you recall the years that fiber optic cable was first deployed the arguments against it were that it was not reliable.  If you evaluate Sprint as the pioneer in the Fiber Optics space, it was nothing short of a miracle when their first cross country all Fiber Optic call was made.  Today Sprint and others have determined that they needed to build redundancy into the system to make it more reliable.  And that is exactly the same thing that we do with our wireless networks.  We build in redundancy.  The application in this example is different but the principals remain the same.

The bottom line is that nothing in life is inherently 5-9’s and the key mechanism to achieving ultra high availability is proper planning, understanding the technology at hand and designing a system/network that has the best chance of performing with ultra high availability.

Wireless solutions today can achieve Gigabit Ethernet (1.25Gb/s) full duplex capacities and at GigaBeam we are developing solutions that will achieve 10 times this capacity in the near term.  There are many benefits to new wireless technologies that are the sum of innovations in chipset, software and regulatory policy  improvements.

There is truth that Fiber cable can handle more capacity via DWDM technologies.  This brings to light one of the real truths of the benefit of fiber and wireless cooperating.  Each technology in its own right has a place within various applications in the telecommunications environment.  The most simple example being that Fiber Optic is typically a better long haul solution and wireless is often more desirable in last/middle/first mile applications.  There are scores of examples of cooperation between technologies, but the bottom line is that wireless can handle ultra broadband right now and the capacity reach of both wireless and fiber will increase materially in time.

Part One #10: Wireless Networking Is Unpredictable:

SJL: Everything in life is unpredictable. “The trick to success in life is understanding those things that you cannot control and managing around them”, said Tom Landry who won a couple of championships and is a revered legend in the game of football. There is a true level of brilliance in these words.

Wireless networks are no more or less predictable than anything else in life, wired or not. The tricks of the trade apply as they do in almost any task- pick the right tool for the job, don’t ask a lamb to negotiate with a lion and don’t kid yourself into thinking you can’t. Wireless circuits have rules and what is important is understanding and abiding them.

At GigaBeam, we have centered our business around the total package approach of lots of tools, and a library of education. We find wireless networks to be extremely predictable. We say, just as real estate is all about “location location location,” wireless networks are all about “physics, physics and physics.”

Legitimate understanding, planning and implementation make for successful solutions to wireless communication challenges. There are a few known important considerations: setting, link distances, weather patterns, and data throughput needed. After that you simply pick the right tool for the task, put that tool to proper use, and understand how the various components interoperate. The results are extremely predictable. GigaBeam prides itself on our attention to these details. Plus, our aim is to be a true solutions partner to our clients and we appreciate that no one technology is ever the solution to all problems. We are not afraid to point our clients in a different direction, if one is called for. That said, we are confident that we have a world class product line up that will rival the likes of most communication challenges and we continue to build on our solution oriented culture.

Wireless is a wonderful facility for a great many communications challenges. Understanding, education and the resulting informed decision making are the key ingredients to a predictable network…….wireless, or otherwise.

Hello Everybody,

I am back at last to introduce you to another face of GigaBeam.  Truthfully, I had planned to embarrass–I mean showcase–our Managing Director of the Americas, Bill Carey, but he has shyly (or perhaps slyly) forgotten to send me his photo and edits . . . more about that later. Instead, I have decided to talk about our CEO, Jay Lawrence.  It occurred to me that many of you may not fully appreciate the dedication and corporate responsibility this man brings to the table.  For that reason I thought I would paint a picture to answer the question “Who’s captaining this ship, anyway?” When you read it, you might understand why we all work so hard at GigaBeam to go the extra mile.

I’d enumerate on Jay’s rich and diverse background before coming to GigaBeam, but you can read all those details in his bio.  Instead I want to focus on his last two years at GigaBeam commencing December 2007 when the board of directors asked him to assume the role of Chief Executive Officer.  That’s when we all got a taste for our new captain.  And right out of the shoot he did three things that have had a profound and lasting effect:

• He formulated an inspiring new mission statement (you can find it on our web) that lifted the Company into a new era of social responsibility and uncompromising ethics
• He initiated a lateral team management system that encouraged all top executives to work together.  “There’s no room for egos here,” he used to say.
• He took deliberate steps to reposition the company for future growth by expanding the product line, aggressively cutting operational costs, improving customer support.  “GigaBeam needs to reflect the voice of its customers,” he’d say.

That was the just the overlay formula, however.  The real work was done painstakingly reviewing operating expenses, penny by penny—right sizing the business.  By the end of his first year as CEO, Jay had cut operational costs by nearly one-half while almost doubling GigaBeam’s sales, and improving support.

By this time (the end of 2008) it was clear the economy was plunging into a recession.  In response Jay took further steps. First, he rewarded the employees with a paid week off over Christmas knowing there would be much more hard work to come.  Then, while many companies began layoffs, he undertook a massive effort to protect the heart of GigaBeam–its employees–electing to cut other expenses instead.  He moved us much smaller modest facilities, implemented cost saving phone plans, and kept all travel expenses to a minimum (including sleeping on couches himself instead of in hotel rooms.) Equally importantly, however, Jay held tight to his vision of what GigaBeam could be and began working with a local marketing agency, Anoroc, to re-brand and overhaul the company’s image.

As a direct result of Jay’s efforts and our own willingness to work as hard as possible under his leadership, we sailed three quarters through 2009 on our own fuel.  Jay had fixed the income statement.  But, a bigger problem lay ahead:  the balance sheet.  By this time in 2009, Jay determined that there was no other course of action possible for GigaBeam but to file for Chapter 11 to find some relief from a balance sheet that was wildly out of proportion and did not offer us any chance to grow.  He knew only one thing going in to Chapter 11:  GigaBeam would come out and would come out fast.  This was his pledge to us and to our customers.  No one can ever argue he didn’t live up to that pledge!   I do think the 57 days we were in Chapter 11 were the longest, hardest, nastiest, most stressful days for Jay ever.  But he survived, and so did we, jobs intact and with a re-found optimism.  Today we stand here operating as a private company unencumbered by a disproportionate balance sheet and still sailing on our own power, against the odds.

What can I say?  From my chair, Jay’s dogged determinism, unfailing optimism, uncompromising ethics, and sheer force of vision propelled GigaBeam forward through the hardest of times, and continues to propel us.  He is always pushing the limits, looking at what more we can do, what we can do better, asking what is working and what is not.  GigaBeam is not a box shop, he says.  GigaBeam is a relationship with each other and with our customers.  Now, in addition, to regular management meetings we have an all company round table every Friday. “What do you think?” he asks, and really wants to hear what we have to say.

Let me close by saying here at GigaBeam, we affectionately refer to Jay as the “mutant” – after all who among us could keep up his pace?  I can’t tell you how many times I have spoken with him and learned that he sent his last email out one night at 1:30 am and his first one the next morning at 3:00 am – Mutant.  Well, he does make a point of going to the gym everyday (what a great example for the rest of us!) He tells me he couldn’t do it if he didn’t sweat a little everyday – which for him means something like running for an hour and bench pressing 300 lbs . . . Yep.  Jay is our beloved indefatigable mutant.   But the best part is . . . .and think about what effect this has on the people who hear it . . . Nine times out of ten when I ask Jay “how are you doing?”–thinking to myself “you must be exhausted!”–he will answer with another GigaBeam favorite word:  FANTABULOUS!

Okay, there were a few days there in the middle of Chapter 11 proceedings, when I may have heard some other words . . . something about “living da dream”–said with only the slightest inflection of sarcasm–but, it never lasted for long.  He reminds me of a commercial from my childhood:  “Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down!”

So here’s to our Mutant Weeble .. . I mean, our Captain, Jay.  Thanks Jay, for everything.

Signed a “wobbly mutant-in-training,”

Marijke

I am starting the second of our blog series today, entitled “Did You Know   . . ?”  In this series we are going to spend some time spotlighting each of our solutions.  We will take the opportunity to discuss particular challenges our products have solved, features you may not know about, or other news about our products.

I am opening this series with our granddaddy product, the Gi-CORE.  This product put us on the map, so to speak, as we were the first company to bring a 70/80GHz gigabit radio to the commercial market.  So, without further ado, I ask:

Did you know . . . .  ?

• Gi-CORE is our 70/80GHz product
• Gi-CORE is capable of sustaining throughput of 1.25Gb/s
• Gi-CORE offers Automatic Transmission Power Control (ATPC) to sustain throughput
• Gi-CORE is the 70/80GHz product that has been on the market the longest, has the most deployments, is the most reliable and simply outperforms other providers

But don’t take my word for it . . . let’s go directly to the source—our customers.  There are hundreds of examples I could choose from, but I will just focus on the most recent Gi-CORE deployment: an order we placed for a telecommunications services provider with their own private wireless network that delivers services to business and enterprise and some retail clients in the Pacific Northwest.

This particular company came to us after being disillusioned by another provider—they found that the power/link budget was not as advertised.  The adaptive rate function (a feature that throttles down the data rate throughput during rain to keep the link up) caused latency and throughput issues contributing to numerous network and customer satisfaction problems. GigaBeam was asked to step in.  Upon hearing what we had to offer, they purchased a Gi-CORE link to evaluate for 30 days.  The link was up and running immediately and ran flawlessly for the entire evaluation period.

Now, please note, this deployment is in the Pacific Northwest – i.e. rain capital of American (I should know I grew up there.)  However, despite all rumors that 70/80GHz products do not perform in the rain, the kind of rain that falls so persistently in the PNW is not the kind of rain that will effect our Gi-CORE—Automatic Transmit Power Control aka “ATPC” accounts for that.   In fact, in order for rain to affect one of our links the rate has to exceed 4” per hour.  And, in Seattle, while rain is the most reliable weather condition, it rarely reaches that rate, hence our links perform beautifully.

Our CEO visited Seattle the other day to meet with the customer.  The customer professed to being extremely pleased with GigaBeam and over a cup of coffee (probably Starbucks – to get out of the rain) signed up for a half a dozen more.

Smiles,

Marijke McCandless

Vice President, Corporate Communications

I am back again to give you another peak at the people who make up GigaBeam.  This time, I thought I’d bring the focus out of the lab and into the field with a profile of our VP of Field and Sustaining Engineering, Tony Breland.

Tony Breland has been with GigaBeam since 2006 when Don Peck brought him on to act as liaison between the Engineering department and the Support Department. Tony brought 20+ years experience to the job, having served previously in key executive leadership roles with Alcatel Lucent, Larcom/NetEdge, NorthPoint Communications and GTE specializing in sales, design and operations of ISP, ASP and Enterprise network solutions. It didn’t take him very long to distinguish himself as a rock star within GigaBeam.   In short order he moved from the position of liaison to VP of Field and Sustaining Engineering.

Okay, so Tony Breland is amazingly good at his job.  Tony took a fledgling support department that was getting lukewarm reception in the field and created a world class department offering 24/7 global support, a suite of extended warranty programs, and a network design integration and implementation program to boot.  Then he helped launch four new product lines to our portfolio in a matter of 18 months.  The guy works hard.

But most importantly, Tony has a knack for listening to and being an advocate for the customer.  When Tony arrives, our customers know they are going to get personal attention.  Truthfully, his job requires a good dose of diplomacy–someone who can separate the real issue from the perceived issue, be responsive and fix whatever the underlying problem is.  More often than not a problem is quietly chocked up to user error and a little education or improved communication is all that is needed.  Still, our customers are always grateful for Tony’s advice and more than one has come back to me to tell me how much they learned from him.  We, in the meantime, are grateful that Tony is one of the champions of our customers, faithfully bringing their voices back to us at headquarters.  After all, it is our customers we want to hear and please.

So, some of you may know these things about Tony already, but did you know that every year he volunteers to teach network computing to local teenagers?  Since 2008, Tony has led a 2 day “IT Communications” workshop for 13 and 14 years olds from the Raleigh Chapter of Boy Scouts of America.  The workshop teaches the kids the fundamentals of network computing and IT communications, and at the end of this rigorous course the kids are awarded a certificate of accomplishment.  At GigaBeam, we are pleased to support his natural inclination.

Okay, so it wouldn’t be fair to rave about Tony without pointing out that he drives us all crazy from time to time with his opinions on odd details . . .  I guess the best ones always do . . . . .  so, let’s just say, we don’t let him make all the decisions, but we always listen because he is someone we inherently respect.

And thus, on behalf of the whole GigaBeam Team, we are pleased to introduce you all to Tony Breland. (The photo, below, was taken atop a rooftop during installation in Doha, Qatar.)

Signed, a grateful colleague,

Marijke