38 fixed-wireless broadband licences

zod

ComReg has officially awarded 38 fixed-wireless broadband licences, which will result in the roll out of 3.5GHz services to towns and rural areas in the State.

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For the record 16 March

The telecommunications regulator says that the licences were issued following a competitive process and the move signals the end of the first phase of the licensing scheme. The Fixed Wireless Access Local Area (FWALA) licences were awarded to eight fixed-broadband operators throughout Ireland.


Under the terms of the licences, the licensees must provide broadband services to business and residential customers, services which must be offered within the next 12 months. Licensed operators will not only be offering services to city-based customers, but will also be offering services to customers in regional towns and rural areas. The companies which received licences include Budget Wireless, Digiweb, European Access Providers (Leap), Irish Broadband Internet Services, Last Mile Wireless, Mid West Network Solutions, Net2Cell and Real Broadband.


Fixed-wireless broadband is a system whereby a broadband Internet connection is created between a base-station and a receiver in the customer's premises. These systems have a range of up to 15 kilometres, which greatly exceeds the 4.5 kilometre limit for DSL broadband. However, the receiver must be within line of sight of the hub in order to receive the signal, particularly when the receiver is more than a few kilometres from the hub.


"The awarding of the licence means that we can move into the licensed spectrum," said Charlie Ardagh, director of Leap Broadband, one of the new licensees. "This will give us exclusive access to the frequency, which gives us a tangible asset and is of interest to investors."


In the medium and long-term, the frequency will be a key factor in the implementation of WiMAX, a new wireless standard which Ardagh believes to have huge potential application in the fixed-wireless broadband industry.


WiMAX is a wireless industry coalition, the aim of which is to advance 802.16 wireless standards for fixed-wireless broadband networks. WiMAX 802.16 technology is expected to enable multimedia applications with wireless connection have a range of up to 30 miles. Members of the organization include Fujitsu, Intel, Nokia, OFDM Forum, Proxim, and Wi-LAN.


Ardagh said that orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is another technology which has the potential to increase the utility and accessibility of fixed-wireless broadband. OFDM could eliminate the line-of-sight requirement of fixed-wireless broadband, so that hubs could be located anywhere within range of the hub.

bminish

Originally posted by zod


Ardagh said that orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is another technology which has the potential to increase the utility and accessibility of fixed-wireless broadband. OFDM could eliminate the line-of-sight requirement of fixed-wireless broadband, so that hubs could be located anywhere within range of the hub.

Don't hold your breath!

OFDM does nothing to alter the fundamental propagation characteristics of microwaves, they still propagate in straight lines

OFDM helps in urban jungle type environments when you have plenty of signal but there's also lot's of multipath.
It won't help at all for rural non line-of-sight paths where the problem tends to be things like hills in the way.


.Brendan

crawler

and has problems with Multi-path distortion.....mind you it does have a good reach and scales well for super-cell type environments....

thegills

they still propagate in straight lines

Not exactly, hence the Fresnel Zone!!
You may direct line of site from one point to another but if the Fresnel Zone is obstructed by up to 25% (I think) you could have serious signal degredation.

I'm not being contradictory but as a lot of Boarders get up on ladders to find the nearest IBB base station it might help having this knowledge.

spongebob

Originally posted by thegills
I'm not being contradictory but as a lot of Boarders get up on ladders to find the nearest IBB base station it might help having this knowledge.

Finding it is one thing , ladder or not. If we all had 2c in here for every promise that IBB have made about the actual availibility of their services then we would be very very rich. IBB are imminent in all corners of Dublin . They have been imminent since late 2002 .....the only good news is that they are still imminent .

I'm damned if I'll ever climb a ladder looking for them

M

bminish

Originally posted by thegills
Not exactly, hence the Fresnel Zone!!
You may direct line of site from one point to another but if the Fresnel Zone is obstructed by up to 25% (I think) you could have serious signal degredation.

I'm not being contradictory but as a lot of Boarders get up on ladders to find the nearest IBB base station it might help having this knowledge.

With the fresnel zone you still need a LOS path plus ~60% of the fresnel zone clear. The more clutter you have in the fresnel zone the worse things are.
Another thing to consider is that the fresnel zone is smaller at 5.8 ghz than it is at 2.4 so there will be some paths that work at 5.8 but don't at 2.4

I have a spreadsheet that does path loss and fresnel zone calculations here
This sheet only does calculations for one obstacle in the fresnel zone but it gives a fairly good idea of what is going on

If you are interested in doing a full path analysis the following pdf explains how to do it

.Brendan