A free-space laser installation chalked up a notable success earlier this year when it survived a nearby earthquake. A test system at the Vancouver plant of fSONA came through the nearby Seattle tremor without skipping a bit.

From this spring, fSONA's customers have been able to apply their own tests to the company's laser transmitter-receivers (transceivers), with the completion by the Vancouver plant of the first production systems.

fSONA is one of a number of telecoms equipment suppliers hoping to meet the growing demand for wireless systems to connect buildings with a beam of laser light. The connection could be between local area networks (LANs) or to provide access to the optical "backbone" in public telecoms networks.

Unlike some radio wavelengths, you do not require a licence to operate a laser link. All you need is a clear view from one building to another. Another advantage to free-space lasers is that it takes just a few hours to install and commission a system.

fSONA proved its ability to set up a system quickly with a demonstration earlier this year at the Broadband Worldwide Wireless Forum in San Francisco. Despite heavy wind and rain for nearly a week, the company maintained an uninterrupted connection between an exhibition centre and a 26th floor hotel suite more than half a mile away.

Costs of laser systems are also within reach of even small companies. Theresa Carbonneau, president and chief executive officer of fSONA, says the company expects to charge around $20,000 for both ends of a system that can operate over about 2km.

The Vancouver company, with an R&D operation in Los Angeles, found its technology at the Martlesham Laboratories of British Telecom in Suffolk (see main story). Ms Carbonneau had worked for BT in the City of London in the mid-1980s. Marriage took her to Canada where she was involved in various telecoms projects.

When Ms Carbonneau was looking for technology to start a new business in broadband telecoms, she naturally remembered her days at BT and took her web browser on a tour of Martlesham's website. Her visit uncovered technical details of R&D carried out in the early 1990s on free-space lasers.

BT had no plans to exploit the patents it had filed on the research and agreed to licence them to fSONA. The two companies signed the deal in April 1997. BTexact Technologies, the company's advanced research and technology arm, said last month that it had exercised its option to acquire an equity stake in fSONA.

To help her to assess the technology, Ms Carbonneau had enlisted Steve Mecherle, an expert in free-space lasers. Dr Mecherle became one of the company's co-founders and is now fSONA's chief technical officer.

Having found its technology, the next step for fSONA was to fund the new business. At that time, investors only had eyes for internet businesses. "Nobody was interested in optical wireless," says Ms Carbonneau. So it took more than two years to fund the business.

The company wanted the money not just to finance development of the technology, turning BT's patents and know how into fully engineered products, but also to set up a manufacturing plant. Many suppliers of telecoms systems prefer to follow the current wisdom and to outsource manufacturing. fSONA decided to set up its own production. As much as anything, the company felt that it had to make systems to persuade potential customers that this was a credible technology.

Bob Carlson, vice president for engineering at fSONA, says that customers are wary of small companies. They need to be convinced that they are dealing with a solid business before they will buy. For this reason, he adds, fSONA put as much effort into the manufacturability of its systems as it did into their design and operability.

"We have designed our product for volume manufacture," says Mr Carlson. As a result, fSONA has put much of the money it has raised into building a production line, near to Vancouver, that can manufacture up to 500 complete systems a month with single-shift working.

Customers also want to know that they can get support for the systems they buy. To fill this gap in its services, fSONA recently signed a long-term agreement with General Dynamics Worldwide Telecommunications Systems for global installation and technical support services.

fSONA has a number of markets in its laser sights. A great many large buildings have no connection to the fibre network, making it hard for them to gain access to high bandwidth services. It can be cheaper to install a laser link to a nearby site on the network than to bring in fibre, or even high capacity copper connections.

The company is already talking to internet service providers (ISPs) who want to bring broadband access to business parks, for example. Small ISPs could use lasers to offer services to schools, offices or even hotels.

One client awaiting delivery of a new system is BT's Martlesham Laboratory, now included in BTexact, home of the R&D team that carried out the original work on the technology. This time the laboratory will have the chance to try out something more sophisticated than an experimental rig.

"The kind of systems we will be receiving from fSONA will be a fully engineered system," says Dr David Heatley, who led the original research team. "As a technologist," he adds "I am really excited about that."

Michael Kenward