On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Oliver Garraux <oliver@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