Beam Solutions - Flat Rate in Weeks

JTMan

I have just spoken to some head of Beam Solutions who told me a lot about their flat rate wireless service that they are about to launch in Ireland.

* The service will cost €29 a month
* It will be completly flat rate, always-on
* It will be 100k/sec
* They need 20 people to contact them from a certain radius saying they want the service and then they will put it in the area.
* The equipment will cost €230. 80% of people are expected to choose self-install.
* It will be based on 802.11b
* It will be focused on the consumer market
* They have been in talks with the ODTR, IDA, Department of Finance and have got a licence from the ODTR.
* They are currently setting up their offices here
* He is convinced that Esat, Eircom and NTL will not offer any competing product.

Their website is at www.beamsolutions.net .

(Sorry, I know this has been partically mentioned in other threads)

BoneCollector

So we can all give ercom back there phones!!!

They need 20 people to contact them from a certain radius saying they want the service and then they will put it in the area

okay so can we check out how many here live within that radius of each other and then build a map for the most likely location of hub installations?

aidan_dunne

I hope tons of people sign up for this because, if they do, Eircom will hopefully loose a $hitload of customers and then they might finally realise that they shot themselves firmly in the foot by not making a flat-rate product available.

Dustaz

from another thread:

Originally posted by Moriarty
Beam are a 2-way satellite provider, they arent using 802.11b. As such, latency will be massive, and either the connection will be sky-high, or there will be very restrictive caps on it. Ho hum. :rolleyes:

Moriarty

Let me clarify

They appear to be using 802.11b to link a number of customers to one local hybrid Network Operations Centre / node. From this NOC, they use a 2-way satellite system to link the customers into their network, and the internet. This will lead to latency issues when using the net.

Now, saying this, its an entirely workable solution for some people - it looks like a decent offering for the general net user. Just be aware that its not going to give you a connection you can play games over, and that things such as SSH/IRC sessions will be lagged.. Just be aware that your internet connection will (indirectly) be over satellite, so you get the issues that come with satellite internet access.

BoneCollector

Personaly...
i will be looking forward to combining this with netsystem which gives me upto 1mb download @ 24/7 using beam
Im already paying around €50 a month between errcom and nolimits for just off peak, and thats just rental.

TomF

I'd love to dump Eircom as the company I am paying a bundle to every month for Internet access via IOL. (I use Esat already for voice calls, and wouldn't use Eircom even if they lowered their prices.)

bkehoe

Also, I suspect that 100K(byte) (i assume 1MBit, as its the most practical speed that can be delivered from the satellite) would be shared with the 20 people connected into each node.

m1ke

i smell a download cap

eire_insane

You say 20 people are need to be in a certain radius well what is the distance ? And does it have to be exactly 20 people as if it a small radius then it would be hard to get 20 people.

Also is this a satellite connection and what is the uploads speeds ?
Should we start looking for people now or is it to ealier.Any how if you are in Mayo and intrested them post here!

longword

Originally posted by Moriarty
They appear to be using 802.11b to link a number of customers to one local hybrid Network Operations Centre / node. From this NOC, they use a 2-way satellite system

Wow. All of the disadvantages of satellite plus all of the disadvantages of 802.11 networks. That has to hurt!

Still, at least individual users won't be hit for a government license to run the satellite uplink.

that things such as SSH/IRC sessions will be lagged..

I doubt you'd notice it much on IRC since it transmits and receives line-by-line and even with a high speed connection, the latency across an IRC network will often be worse than the satellite hit.

It hurts a lot on SSH/telnet because each individual keypress has to make it all the way up then all the way back before you see it on the screen. Same goes for VNC, Citrix, PC Anywhere and similiar applications.

I wonder if the users within a node might be able to communicate without going through the satellite. Good for a small game of Quake at least if they're like-minded souls.

longword

Originally posted by Dustaz
from another thread:
Beam are a 2-way satellite provider, they arent using 802.11b

If they're looking for "20 people to contact them from a certain radius" then at least part of their network must be based on some form of terrestrial wireless solution - and 802.11b is a good bet.

I'd say Moriarty has it right. Wireless providers anywhere else would use an E1 or T1 line for the basestation->internet link (I have a friend in the US on such a service), but those things cost silly money in this country. A satellite uplink sounds plausible for so cheap a service.

Arboration

Anyone know what the radius is?

longword

Originally posted by Arboration
Anyone know what the radius is?

It will need line-of-sight to the uplink node, but so long as that's available they should be able to service users in a 10km radius.

MarkR

Oops, i had a question about the pricing on the site, so if any one it, just ignore it! Seems it's not been publicised yet. Fingies crossed folks..

BoneCollector

i smell a download cap

Even with a cap, at that price its always on 24/7 and if you combine with netsystem which has no cap, since your download is through netsystem and you only ping with beam then you shouldl never expire your cap

bkehoe

BoneCollector, you're talking of a 1.5 - 2 second lag though, and VPN doesn't work well, if at all, over certain kinds of 2 way sat. 700-1000ms is bad enough without doubling it. 10KM would be a bit too much if they're strictly keeping their equipment below 100mW, and as the signal drops, it'd get more unreliable. I'd be guessing that they'll try 7KM or so. In the US, setups like this, though using land based backbones are very popular, and perform extremely well, though they have the advantage of much higher power limits for 802.11b, meaning a well placed tower can get people from over 40KM away.

BoneCollector

I have spoke to beam and they indicate they are rolling out within a week in the dublin area. They say they will be putting in upto 60 base stations with line of sight and non-line of sight with a radius of 3 miles. Initial roll out will be 100 users, they would also like as many people to register there interest so as to get an idea of how best to tap its potential.
GO REGISTER NOW
http://www.beamsolutions.ie/register.html

mayhem#

Originally posted by BoneCollector
okay so can we check out how many here live within that radius of each other and then build a map for the most likely location of hub installations? [/B]

Don't want to be a stick in the mud but IrishWAN has been trying to do something very similar for some time now and it's been hard enough to find two people who live within said radius and LOS to each other.
It all sounds like another solution that will only work in urban areas...

bkehoe

Didn't Beam claim in their last thread that they weren't going to do Dublin, but instead focus on villages around the country, or something like that?

MarkR

And i'm sure you all worked very hard, this service has money behind it though, along with no worries about where to get the connection. I'm in clare, and i've checked out the clare forum, not much going on i'm afraid! With my luck the transmission will cause interferance with the air traffic controll and i'll wind up with a 747 in my driveway!

Someone mentioned areas where transmissions like this may not be allowed. What kind of palces? Blasting sites? Secret nuclear bunkers? Near berties house?

dahamsta

Posts by Mark Braxton on Boards.ie:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/search.php?action=finduser&userid=6781

adam

phoenix2181

eh guys? correct me if I'm wrong but this is priced at 109 euro + vat......I know theres no cap but even still its still madly overpriced & is comparative to the istream solo with 3gb cap

mayhem#

Originally posted by Legbreaker
And i'm sure you all worked very hard, this service has money behind it though, along with no worries about where to get the connection. I'm in clare, and i've checked out the clare forum, not much going on i'm afraid!

Money has feck all to do with it.
If you do not have enough interested people living within radius and LOS to each other you can forget about it, clear and simple. I have two guys beside myself living within a 6 mile radius all with broadband satellite connections and no-one to share it with! That's the reality you're dealing with.....

gurramok

Originally posted by phoenix2181
eh guys? correct me if I'm wrong but this is priced at 109 euro + vat......I know theres no cap but even still its still madly overpriced & is comparative to the istream solo with 3gb cap

That price according to the website is for their existing satellite service.
The 29 E/mnth reported by Fungus is for their unreleased wireless service. Guess its just wait and see on what they offer.

the_corpo

i *really* need this to work out

MarkR

Originally posted by mayhem#


Money has feck all to do with it.
If you do not have enough interested people living within radius and LOS to each other you can forget about it, clear and simple. I have two guys beside myself living within a 6 mile radius all with broadband satellite connections and no-one to share it with! That's the reality you're dealing with.....

Ok, maybe a little to do with money,and a lot to do with apathy and lack of knowledge?

mayhem#

Care to elaborate on that?

Cork

I THINK THAT WE MAY BE IN FOR A DOMINO EFFECT IF BEAM COME THRU.
This does more for Internet usage in Ireland than any Eircom mouse. Internet usage in Ireland is expensive. It is not a luxury. The Internet is used by children, visually impaired & the house bound.

I met a rep from Chorus the other day – he acknowledged that rates in Ireland were crazy. He was told that Chorus will be introducing a package within the next 3 weeks.

FF will no doubt be holding meetings pushing the NICE treaty. I will go and find out about the basis Mary O Rourke used during the passing of the communications bill.

We have witnessed many false dawns. The war has not been won. The Eircom mouse is alive and well. There has just been mention of a mousetrap.

dahamsta

Care to elaborate on that?

The IrishWAN and CorkWAN projects are community efforts, for the most part developed by geeks and nerds in their spare time, with spare cash. The networks are all in trial phases, and all advertising and marketing has been by word of mouth, and will continue to do so. For now, it's only people like us who are even vaguely aware of the projects, however when networks are actually up and running, word will spread like wildfire about the networks, and people will be clambering over each other to get set up. It's actually one of the hardest parts of planning for the networks.

So, like Legbreaker implies, it's not really down to a lack of interest, it's down to a lack of awareness; awareness of the existance of the projects. Apathy certainly comes into it, and money to a degree too, but awareness is the problem now. Except it's not a problem, we don't want people clambering all over us for access now, because we have nothing to give them.

By the way, I discussed Beam's services with Mark Braxton last year, and at the time, he intended using the exact same marketing scheme to sell the service, i.e. little or none. He believed that the pace of word-of-mouth would have them under enough pressure on it's own, and would negate the need for a substantial investment in marketing. He attributed the low costs at least in part to this.

adam

Dustaz

Originally posted by Cork

I met a rep from Chorus the other day – he acknowledged that rates in Ireland were crazy. He was told that Chorus will be introducing a package within the next 3 weeks.

roflmao

Dr.Seagull

with chorus everthing is 3 weeks away then when u ring em again its another 3 weeks and so untill its years later and u have given up all hope

BoneCollector

Yupe! they gave me the same line nearly 2 years ago :eek:

When you visit there site.. maybe they should just put up a sign there saying....

"Broadband internet access available Tomorrow!"

unknown_a38

im bout 15km from malin head(most northernly point) so i take it ill never get this flat rate wireless service from beam solutions.

sceptre

Split the Irish WAN stuff (most of it at any rate) into a new thread

ciderandhavoc

Where on earth did €29pm come from!

FROM BEAMSOLUTIONS SITE:

Service Price
Connection £249.99 €413
Monthly fee (Single) £109.99 €182
Monthly fee (Multi) £199.99 €330
Installer's fee £149.99 €248 (standard installation)*

All prices exclude VAT and other taxes. The connection fee is a one off charge.


*Installation fee is a guide charge, which will be decided by your installer, depending on the complexity of the installation. This fee must be paid directly to them.

Originally posted by Fungus
I have just spoken to some head of Beam Solutions who told me a lot about their flat rate wireless service that they are about to launch in Ireland.

* The service will cost €29 a month
* It will be completly flat rate, always-on
* It will be 100k/sec
* They need 20 people to contact them from a certain radius saying they want the service and then they will put it in the area.
* The equipment will cost €230. 80% of people are expected to choose self-install.
* It will be based on 802.11b
* It will be focused on the consumer market
* They have been in talks with the ODTR, IDA, Department of Finance and have got a licence from the ODTR.
* They are currently setting up their offices here
* He is convinced that Esat, Eircom and NTL will not offer any competing product.

Their website is at www.beamsolutions.net .

(Sorry, I know this has been partically mentioned in other threads)

mike65

They simply have'nt updated thier site which is'nt very impressive, those prices refere to 512 d/l and 153 u/l.

Mike

pete

Originally posted by ciderandhavoc
Where on earth did €29pm come from!

FROM BEAMSOLUTIONS SITE:

Service Price
Connection £249.99 €413

Scroll up about 10 messages and read gurramoks post from monday.

Or just read the Beam site in the first place

"Information about Ireland wireless "roll-out" available July 8th, please register for more information"

JTMan

Where on Earth did the €29 figure come from

Sunday Tribune +
from speaking to Mark personally

BoneCollector

One could probably summise.. that because of the high cost of installation which is to provide you with the hardware.. the ongoing costs at €29pm and a need for at least 20 people within a radius, and running
through a VPN network with upto 100kbs each, could indicate they are setting up a shared bandwidth on a business package?? (is this making any sense!?)

JTMan

Originally posted by BoneCollector
The high cost of installation

80% of us will be using a self-install package apparently

Mark Braxton

Hi,

I have not been online for some time now. I think that I can answer all your question within reasons. The website is not updated for various of reasons. I can tell you once things start to move, it will be fast.

MDR

Hey Mark,

First off let me tell you what we can do for you, with the permission of the rest of the committee I can make the statistics we gathered as part of the survey available to you.There is some quite useful information in there.

Secondily I am sure you are not blind to the Irish Internet situation, I feel that if you are to act, it must be decisively . You have, and I am sure you recognise this, a golden opportunity to make money, lets face it you are in business, there is a wide open market for residental internet and you are well positioned to fill it.

On to my questions, lets us say that in area X you are willing to provide the service as 30 odd people have expressed an interest. You have to setup your satillete downlink somewhere in that area, so what do you do, do you for instance approach an applicant, offer them a cut price deal if they host the satillete dish and extra equipment required to run the node on their property ?

Now, your decision to target smaller towns and villages in the regions initially instead of the large urban areas (all of whom are equally poorly served by the existing providers) interested me. I would have thought for a small company such as yours, the early objective would be to establish a large customer base ASAP ?
Can you explain the reasoning behind this ?

Many Thanks

Ray Kinsella

yellum

Originally posted by mayhem#


Don't want to be a stick in the mud but IrishWAN has been trying to do something very similar for some time now and it's been hard enough to find two people who live within said radius and LOS to each other.
It all sounds like another solution that will only work in urban areas...

If the network is there people will soon start joining. The irelandOffline forum shows that theres huge interest in people getting broadband and always on connections.

Once a point of presence is there it'll start populating once people see it in action.

dahamsta

[ Removed. I give up, I really do. Mark, if you want to be close to 'your people', either open your gob and talk or simply go away. We've been dealing with dicks like O'Really for years, we simply don't /need/ another one coming along with empty promises. Either put up or shut up. Kay? Kay. --adam ]

jmcc

Originally posted by dahamsta
We've been dealing with dicks like O'Really for years, we simply don't /need/ another one coming along with empty promises.

One thing that is bugging me about all these proposed satellite based solutions is that most of them tend to fall over at the satellite headend/internet connection point.

Take Europe-Online for example. A great idea - an asymmetrical network uses phoneline uplink and satellite downlink. The service was almost liquidated recently because it had badly miscalculated the required bandwidth ratio for a given number of users. Thus you had piles of warez dudes and troughers hammering the network so badly that it was unusable during daylight hours. Many of them, I think were on cable modems as well and were using EON to augment their heavily contended bandwidth.

Recently EON introduced their new Skybooster system which provides a more sensible use of available bandwidth and have started to charge for a set number of hours and per minute there after. The offline download facility is still available though.

The single point of failure for any WiFi based system is always going to be the link back into the internet. Thus you will have great bandwidth (assuming line of sight) to the satellite uplink but heavily contended, and as a result, poor bandwidth on internet connections.

Another aspect is that the usage pattern of internet users has changed dramatically in the last few years. It used to be highly asymmetrical with users downloading a page and then reading it and then repeating the process. They also used to download the odd patch or program. Now it is more common to see links saturated with online gaming or troughing whacking CD sized downloads.

The pricing sounds nice but when you start dividing the bandwidth by 10 or 20 it starts sounding as fast as, or as slow as, a dialup connection.

Beamsolutions' test page points to an IP that resolves to a Gilat IP range. Now this would tend to indicate that Beam is basically reselling the Gilat service. It would be interesting if Beam could provide the full connectivity details (internet connections/caching arrangements/contention ratios/number of users during peak hours). Without these very important statistics, it is all just sales hype.

Regards...jmcc

SkepticOne

Personally, I just want to see the service in place so that people can have some alternatives. It's a bit early to start scrutinising their conectivity and technical arrangements, imho. A bit of competition is what we need in Ireland. It does not need to be perfect, people will decide when/if it actually arrives.

I want more companies trying to succeed here. It's been a long time since a new company, not tied to a parent telco has come along to cater to the home market in Ireland.

Mark Braxton

I believe our website will be updated before tomorrow. Here are some of the answer to your questions.

Why smaller areas instead of Dublin or Cork?

We will be running a management system to insure security, bandwidth, global access, and beam up cards (top up). This system needs to be field tested in volume that can be controled.

The other thing that has to be tested is the distance and line of sight. We have developed a product that allows distance of (hopefully) 12 miles but stay in the 100mw transmission in the 2.4Ghz range. Our non-line of sight antenna should be good for
3 miles, but also needs to be tested here in Europe.

Beam is not worry about getting customers and has been sitting on inventory for some time. The UK is opening up at the end of July for this service and we need to deploy very fast there. I can't give you the business strategy that Beam has, but can tell you that Ireland is a focus, but not the main money maker for us.
Many advisor in the company think we need to by-pass Ireland all together.

Testing in north-west ireland.

I've tried to get someone to test this in Letterkenny, but there has been no interest. I have sent part of this email to the donegal news:

****************************************************

So far I have had very little response from the town (Letterkenny) that they need flat-rate high speed internet access. I had stopped my crews to go to Letterkenny as there seems that there is no need. Could you confirm that internet usage is very low in the area.

I will still conduct my testing to a selected number of users of 5 instead of 20 at various distances (1,3,5, and 7 miles). The requirement for test 1 is Line of sight, test 2 is non-line of sight, and test 3 is moving vehicle. All these have worked in the States 2 years ago, but because of the 100mw transmission, we had to modify the equipment to do the distance. BTs test is for 1/2 mile, and they were very happy. I realize that the north-west Ireland may not be a market for this, but the lower half of Ireland has already signed up for this service.

I need to find 5 locations (persons) that would test this at no charge to them for 1 month and 1 location (person) that would allow a satellite dish and radio antenna to be placed on there property (they would also have internet access). Installation of equipment should be completed in two days. The satellite equipment could be ground mounted with mono-pole radio antenna (small area with no construction). Power would need to be provide at the location of the dish (we would pay for the power used - low usage like a pc). We have all the required licenses from the ODTR.

After the test, we can continue to provide the service to our testers for a fee of 29 euro pcm + vat for 100+kbps (always-on, 280-450kbps normally). After the non-response from various sources in Letterkenny, we will not launch it in the area and have canceled the 155mb link for the town. Any help you can provide will help, of course if there is not a need please let me know. My backup is in the Western Isle with the CIT or the Shetland Isle council.

*************************************************
As you can see, the satellitte system is for fast deployment, and we were going to use the bandwidth from the ring in Derry to run Letterkenny. I again can't tell you the partners involved at this time. Some will break the news this week in the UK.

In the UK, we have partnered with Firstnet http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/index.cfm?go=news.view&news=2452

Testing of mobile solution with the UK government will be completed on Tuesday with a three year contract for a 20 station units that roam through out the UK. The system automatic does the cross pole, and channel delay.

So twenty users are not a problem, but then again who said I was using 512 down and 153 up or who said I was using Gilat.

Part of our testing was with Siemens and the stops we did to deploy on-demand high speed internet for the 12 car train over a one month period. This was view by 7000+ high level manages from Ireland (north/south), Scotland, Wales, and England.

I must leave at the moment, I have more pressing duties. I will try to answer all your questions. (don't ask how it works, there is a patent on that, or the detail of how or the business model/sense)

You can address your questions to chronicle@beamsolutions.net

I don't have the time to read all the postings, but will post the question and answers including the ones I can not answer.

What can you do to help?

I need a small number of test site through out Ireland. so speak up and be counted.

The service at the beginning will not be for gaming, terminal server, citrix, pc anywhere, video, VPN should be ok with our new software.

The service is for browsing, FTP, and email until our backhaul is attached.

Thanks
Mark

Mark Braxton

I forgot, before everyone says anything about Aramiska, we are in talks with them to service Ireland.

mayhem#

Originally posted by yellum
Once a point of presence is there it'll start populating once people see it in action.

Oh really?!
So you're suggesting that I should just go ahead and setup a POP even though not a dingle soul has showed any interest in sharing my connection for free?

bkehoe

Originally posted by Mark Braxton
I forgot, before everyone says anything about Aramiska, we are in talks with them to service Ireland.

And what do you mean by that? Aramiska already have installers and resellers in Ireland. They are currently finalising their leasing agreement (ING won't do Ireland), and I'm expecting installation of my Arc3 in around 1 month max. Maybe you could clear that up?

Re non LOS antenna. So how non los is this? Will it go through hills, mountains, etc. Not at 2.4GHz anyway.

So who are you using for your satellite backbone if not Gilat? Aramiska?

Brendan.