Wireless firm 5G building bases from Irvine to Africa.

It's not every day that six black limousines pull up to the Marina del Rey offices of tiny 5G Wireless Communications Inc. But one Saturday in March, the Prime Minister of Mauritius came with his entourage to visit with Chief Executive Jerry Dix, to talk about deploying a Wi-Fi network across his island nation.

The 17-person company has been making a name for itself by selling its wireless base stations and networks to university campuses and mid-sized cities, quietly wiring up places like UCLA's Anderson School of Business and towns like Rockford, Ill., while bigger companies like EarthLink Inc. and Google Inc. duke it out over metro centers like San Francisco and Philadelphia.

5G Wireless makes base station equipment, the space-age modules that beam wireless broadband signals into buildings. It's trying to spread its signal as far as possible, even to the far corners of the globe.

The company just finished deploying a Wi-Fi network in Lagos, Nigeria. By partnering with Nigerian Internet service provider Polestar Inc., 5G won the contract to deploy its wireless base station network in the city of an estimated 15 million people, the bustling business hub of West Africa.

The wireless network will be used for credit card processing, video surveillance and basic Internet access.

"The heads of state in these emerging nations understand that laying fiber and copper wire are not good choices today," Dix said. The alternative to wireless Internet access is wired access, which means digging up sidewalks and installing copper wires and cables to connect buildings. "Besides the fact that it's too expensive, we've been told that (bandits) will dig it up the same day you lay it down."

That's just one of the many challenges of deploying infrastructure in an emerging economy, Dix explained.

Base-station strategy

5G's network is made up of "base stations" affixed to a tall building, which send out a signal. Smaller satellite stations are then installed to fill in the gaps, whether it's from buildings blocking the transmission or just to compensate for the greater distance between the base stations.

A 5G base station sells for $30,000, depending on the strength of the signal, while the smaller, "macro base stations" cost from $2,000 to $4,000.

5G claims that its base-station approach, similar to that used by cellular phone companies, is cheaper than the "mesh" Wi-Fi approaches that companies like EarthLink and Google are proposing. Mesh wireless networks involve installing wireless nodes on telephone polls or street lamps throughout the city, at intervals of a couple of hundred feet. The signal is strung along dozens or hundreds of nodes, rather than radiating out from a few central base stations, or hot zones.

The jury is still out on which approach will win the wireless challenge.

5G's stock is struggling, dropping from the Nasdaq to the over the counter exchange last year, and lately has traded at about 60 cents a share. But revenues surged last year--the company brought in $1.6 million in revenues for the 9 months ending in September, up from $651,000 for all of 2004. 5G operated at a loss of about $5 million for 2004, the last full year for which financial results are available.

The company started out wiring nursing homes and small campuses on a pro-bono basis. Then it landed contracts for the campuses of Cal State Long Beach and UC Irvine, and some small towns in Ohio.

"We worked with third- and fourth-tier types--and we'll never give up those customers, because they're our lifeline," Dix said. The company is taking the same approach in its international push, seeking out small to mid-sized projects to build its resume.

"When you're not heavily funded, the idea is to get your product out in the marketplace and get reliable customers that are 'referencable,'" Dix said.

Honing technology

At the UCLA's Anderson School, 5G used just one base station and four macro stations. The biggest challenge was getting the signal to penetrate the school's brick walls to flood the classrooms.

The task in Lagos is a little more daunting: Concrete buildings, reinforced steel, aluminum roofs, extreme temperatures and possible monsoon rains. According to Wi-Fi monitor JiWire Inc., Nigeria has a total of just 26 "hot-spots"--public places where users can access the Internet wirelessly.

Dix and his team configured the Nigerian network in their Marina del Rey offices, based on area blueprints. Five Polestar engineers came to Los Angeles last year for a month of training before the equipment shipped out.

Dix said 5G is working with Polestar to extend its coverage in other cities in Nigeria. But they will soon face stiff competition.

Rival Internet service provider SwiftTalk Ltd, based in Lagos, selected Santa Clara-based SkyPilot Networks Inc. earlier this year for its deployment of a wireless mesh-style network in Lagos and two other Nigerian cities. Chevron Nigeria has already deployed its own Wi-Fi network using wireless antennas from Chicago-based WiFi-Plus Inc. and base stations from Vienna-based Why Wire Inc. And in February, Google and Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala announced plans to bring wireless Internet access to Abuja, Nigeria's capital, as well as six other African cities.

"The market over there is so vast," Dix said. "There's going to be competition, but there's not just one company that can supply all those areas."

HILARY POTKEWITZ

Staff Reporter