airFiber (text of the 8 minute video)

Thu Mar 29 21:37:24 UTC 2012

On 3/29/12 21:53 , Jonathan Lassoff wrote:
> 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.

Cost will continue to drop, fact of the matter is the beam width is
rather narrow and they attenuate rather well so you can have a fair
number of them deployed without co-channel interference. if you pack a
tower full of them you're going to have issues.

>> 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
> 
> 