airFiber (text of the 8 minute video)

Thu Mar 29 19:53:17 UTC 2012

On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Oliver Garraux <oliver at g.garraux.net> wrote:
> I was at Ubiquiti's conference.  I don't disagree with what you're
> saying.  Ubiquiti's take on it seemed to be that 24 Ghz would likely
> never be used to the extent that 2.4 / 5.8 is.  They are seeing 24 Ghz
> as only for backhaul - no connections to end users.

I suspect this is just due to cost and practicality. ISPs, nor users
will want to pay 3k USD, nor widely utilize a service that requires
near-direct LOS.
I could see this working well in rural or sparse areas that might not
mind the transceiver.

> I guess
> point-to-multipoint connections aren't permitted by the FCC for 24
> Ghz.

The whole point of these unlicensed bands is that their usage is not
tightly controlled. I imagine hardware for use still should comply
with FCC's part 15 rules though.

> AirFiber appears to be fairly highly directional.  It needs to
> be though, as each link uses 100 Mhz, and there's only 250 Mhz
> available @ 24 Ghz.

Being so directional, I'm not sure that cross-talk will as much of an
issue, except for dense hub-like sites. It sounds like there's some
novel application of using GPS timing to make the radios spectrally
orthogonal -- that's pretty cool. If they can somehow coordinate
timing across point-to-point links, that would be great for sites that
co-locate multiple link terminations.

Overall, this looks like a pretty cool product!

--j