MTN Airfibre

[CliffordEls]

Its interesting to see the difference with MTN Airfibre vs Openserve Web Connect Air

When I had Web Connect Air, they installed a Radwin RW5000 SU-Air to connect to their base station at the Sentech Tower

RADWIN 5000 CPE-Air 5GHz 500Mbps - MiRO Distribution

The CPE-Air is an attractively priced 500Mbps outdoor Subscriber Unit with an integrated antenna, that operates in the 5GHz band. It is interoperable with all RADWIN 5GHz base stations.

miro.co.za

And when connecting to the Openserve network, it was being done using DHCP auth and not pppoe
Found an old pic of their auth using DHCP option 60



Also worth mentioning that I had direct Line of Sight to the Sentech Tower and was less than 5km away, but we struggled to get 30/10 (which sucks since the antenna claims to be 500mbps/40km)

 

[cavedog]

Its interesting to see the difference with MTN Airfibre vs Openserve Web Connect Air

When I had Web Connect Air, they installed a Radwin RW5000 SU-Air to connect to their base station at the Sentech Tower

RADWIN 5000 CPE-Air 5GHz 500Mbps - MiRO Distribution

The CPE-Air is an attractively priced 500Mbps outdoor Subscriber Unit with an integrated antenna, that operates in the 5GHz band. It is interoperable with all RADWIN 5GHz base stations.

miro.co.za

And when connecting to the Openserve network, it was being done using DHCP auth and not pppoe
Found an old pic of their auth using DHCP option 60
View attachment 1932021


Also worth mentioning that I had direct Line of Sight to the Sentech Tower and was less than 5km away, but we struggled to get 30/10 (which sucks since the antenna claims to be 500mbps/40km)

I think the only thing that is holding back this "Air Fibre" tech is the price. If you look at the specs for Tarana you can see that a single base station with 4 BN's or nodes on it can handle over a 1000 subscribers with a max throughput of 9 -12Gbps on the free unlicensed ranged or 25.6Gbps if you combined 3Ghz licensed which the mobile networks won't do because they use it for 5G.

So the hardware price per tower and subscriber is pretty expensive. If it was much cheaper then as a mobile network with lots of towers everywhere you can really put pressure on FNO's because you don't have the expensive trenching to worry about.

 

[rodga]

Lets hope it doesn’t take long

Please note that there will be a delay in scheduling your installation as we are currently awaiting the delivery of routers and RN’s from MTN/Supersonic. We will proceed with booking your installation as soon as stock has been received.

 

[cavedog]

Lets hope it doesn’t take long

Yeah the installers told me they fully booked, They work Saturday to Wednesday and do 4 to 5 depending on install complexity but they have a lot of job cards to do. I guess it's pretty popular now that MTN is advertising it more and coverage expanded quite rapidly.