Rural wireless broadband startup Stelera Wireless launched services in its first two U.S. markets. The company owns 42 AWS licenses across the country; the licenses, which use the 2.1 GHz and 1.7 GHz bands, were auctioned by the FCC last year. The company soft-launched services in two rural markets in southeastern Texas, with plans starting at $50 a month with a 2-year service contract.

Stelera Wireless CEO Ed Evans said the company is in the process of building out 55 markets, which it expects will be completed by the end of the year. Those will be mostly in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Kansas. "These first two markets were the testbeds, but after this things should go much quicker," Evans said, in an interview.

Evans hopes to add another 100 markets the following year.  The company is focusing on smaller, rural markets with populations of under 20,000, but he did say the company owns some bigger markets as well, and that it is looking into extending services there. Evans doesn't expect to complete those markets for until the middle of next year.

"We've built the first purely broadband wireless network available in the U.S.," said Evans. "We took a very hard look at WiMAX, but with the GSM carriers supporting HSUPA, we can offer the speeds that WiMAX is promising in the future, today."

As part of its launch announcement, Stelera also said that Nokia Siemens Networks supplied the end-to-end network solution and turnkey services for this initial deployment and will continue to do so as the network expands.

The Nokia Siemens Networks supplied a flat, all-IP, I-HSPA architecture solution, which includes the company's flagship Flexi Base Station optimized for the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum band. The end-to-end offering consists of network and service core, backhaul and wireless broadband access in addition to turnkey services like network planning, spectrum clearing, site acquisition and construction, installation, integration, optimization, as well as maintenance, and interoperability testing with end user devices.