What is Microwave Broadband?
The two driving forces of modern Internet are broadband, and wireless. The Wireless standard combines the two, delivering high-speed broadband Internet access over a wireless connection. Because it can be used over relatively long distances, it is an effective "last mile" solution for delivering broadband to the home, and for creating wireless "hot spots" in places like airports, college campuses, and of course small communities like Northlew.
Wireless requires a high point to work, similar to a mobile phone tower, which is connected to the Internet using a standard wired high-speed connection, such as a T3 line or fibre optic link. But as opposed to a traditional Internet Service Provider (ISP) which divides that bandwidth among customers via wire, it uses a microwave link to establish a connection.
Because Wireless does not depend on cables to connect each endpoint, deploying this technology to an entire village can be done in a matter of a couple days, saving significant amounts of manpower and cost. BT quoted us £400,000 to rewire the village for 0.5 Meg broadband.. we will pay just £40,000 for 10 Meg.. possibly rising to 100 Meg in 2011/12.
Microwave works in much the same fashion as your mobile phone. Wireless signals are sent out over the airwaves, but instead of carrying only voice and sms signals, they carry broadband data. Microwave broadband is also known as Wireless broadband, Wi-Fi broadband (802.11 a,b & g) & WiMax broadband (802.16).
How does it work?
It works by sending a signal from an internet connection, like an exchange or a centre, to a remote area without loosing the speed in the exchange. There is a slight latency with the service of around 20/30ms so unnoticable, which is the time it takes to send your request from the network backbone to your home. The latency is far lower than that of satellite Broadband.
In this instance, we will put up an aerial on a high point in northlew which will be the church tower, each home will have a dish to send and recieve the signal from the high point in the village to get speeds of initially, up to 34Mb/s. (Mega bits a second) Inside your home you will have a router which will allow you to surf the net, make a phone call, watch a movie or play an online game from your bedroom... or even your garden!
As the network advances and as it gets more powerful, the system will open to all sorts of systems, from streaming television to Voice over IP telephone systems, in fact this new state of the art technology will match some of the best broadband networks in the country.
