Supersonic to launch Unlimited Air Fibre

[wingnut771]

Yeah, closer to microwave in how it acts.
5G in SA does not use this frequency at the moment, mostly because of the limited range.
If Supersonic is going to use it, then I would like to see how they will get 15km non-line-of-sight connectivity.

Looking at the demo, it looks like the signal bounces off the antennas, acting like relays. So I guess the first house needs to be line of sight, then each house after that needs to be line of site with each other?

 

[SupersonicSA]

This sounds way too good to be true. They can cover a 15KM area with 50mbps, uncapped, unshaped, no jitter or high ping and without line of sight?
How are they achieving this?


I'd be interested to know exactly what frequency range it's operating in.

We are operating in the ISM 5.8 GHz (5.725Ghz-5.875Ghz) range

 

[Nod]

We are using the ISM 5.8 GHz (5.725Ghz-5.875Ghz), so not the 60Ghz range as above.

Thanks for clarifying.

 

[SlowInternet]

I really hope this will be available in my area. I desperately need some internet I can depend on.

 

[Vorastra]

We are operating in the ISM 5.8 GHz (5.725Ghz-5.875Ghz) range

Shot. Now to somehow get my neighbourhood to sign up and show interest. We're one of those areas that had our ADSL removed without any alternative and people are definitely interested since there's a billion WiFi LTE routers appearing on my phone.

R800 for 50mbps is way cheaper than what I'm paying now for slower LTE...

Time to herd cats.

 

[SupersonicSA]

Here we are going to build another network where you need the community to sign up Rather just go and enable MTN base stations with this new technology and then let word of month / Marketing do the work bringing in the new clients.

This was a consideration, but we have 17 000 base stations covering the country, and feel that letting the communities decide who needed it most was the most fair and transparent way of rolling this product out to market. We will not be overlapping existing Fibre areas, but focusing on Secondary towns, Peri Urban, Rural and Townships.

 

[L-Dog]

Only download speeds are advertised what are the upload speeds like ?

 

[Gtx Gaming]

We are operating in the ISM 5.8 GHz (5.725Ghz-5.875Ghz) range

When will you be routing Supersonic fixed lte through the nearest DC and not everything in JHB?

Regards

 

[Nod]

I really hope this will be available in my area. I desperately need some internet I can depend on.

We have DFA in town, used by MTN, Vodacom and Telkom, but nobody wants to provide FTTx to the people here. We are apparently too small. Maybe something like this would be doable for smaller towns.

 

[Yskasmetnstoof]

What exactly does "unlimited" mean? Remember Telkom's "uncapped"? It was actually 120 gb p.m. and after 120 still do what you want.... but at something like 1Mbps.

 

[SupersonicSA]

so any idea of what the tech used here is exactly?
Would like to know how good it is for gaming compared to adsl/fibre

The technology is a Point to Multipoint technology that requires an antennae installation at the home, providing a far more stable and guaranteed service vs an Indoor LTE router. There patented interference cancelling algorithms combined with Beam forming and combining technologies, allows for high quality, high availability connectivity with low latencies.

 

[SupersonicSA]

What exactly does "unlimited" mean? Remember Telkom's "uncapped"? It was actually 120 gb p.m. and after 120 still do what you want.... but at something like 1Mbps.

Unlimited means there is NO FUP, NO Shaping and NO throttling.

 

[SupersonicSA]

Only download speeds are advertised what are the upload speeds like ?

5 Mbps/2 Mbps
10 Mbps/5 Mbps
20 Mbps/10 Mbps
50 Mbps/20 Mbps
100 Mbps/40 Mbps

 

[HartsockZA]

Yeah, closer to microwave in how it acts.
5G in SA does not use this frequency at the moment, mostly because of the limited range.
If Supersonic is going to use it, then I would like to see how they will get 15km non-line-of-sight connectivity.

Mesh topology

So wait @SupersonicSA are you saying you'll be using 5Ghz freq unlicensed spectrum? Or purely licensed because Tarana says on their site unlicensed spectrum.

 

[TH30D]

Sounds interesting. hopefully they will be far better than rain.

 

[SupersonicSA]

Mesh topology

So wait @SupersonicSA are you saying you'll be using 5Ghz freq unlicensed spectrum? Or purely licensed because Tarana says on their site unlicensed spectrum.

5Ghz unlicensed spectrum..

 

[CataclysmZA]

Tarana (taranawireless.com)

Google, among others, has been trialling this kind of thing for a while. It's not LTE with QoS attached to it, it's a superset of WiMax technologies. The standard is IEEE 802.16. Crystal Web was running a trial of Google's topology, and several other ISPs and WISPs locally have a similar thing. Herotel Fusion is the same idea, but on a smaller scale, but it is a single point-to-point connection.

This is different from the fixed wireless solutions currently available. Basically it's a mesh network, where every client endpoint is a MIMO antenna that uses reserve bandwidth to pass through signals intended for other clients. If you need 100Mbps of bandwidth, you'd probably get that from at least two other clients.

https://www.taranawireless.com/static/media/Tarana-firsts.f6bc572a.mp4

It's probably "as good" as fibre, and at least better than LTE which is heavily contended. This does present some drawbacks, however.

If there are no clients near you that have battery backup, while you do, your connection is going to be inconsistent to nonfunctional depending on how far away you are from the tower during load shedding. Bandwidth should at least be reserved for you so that your connection is uninterrrupted while your AP serves as a piggy-back point for other clients.

Given the use of the ISM band, there are some interference risks from drones, but this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Line-of-sight to at least two other clients is probably required for the best signal, and to the tower if you're the first one to sign up. Although, being the first client is probably not a great experience if you're too far from the tower.

Latency will also be higher than fibre, but not by a significant margin. Probably highs of 10ms and minimums of 5ms depending on how many hops you need to make.

 

[lucifir]

The technology is a Point to Multipoint technology that requires an antennae installation at the home, providing a far more stable and guaranteed service vs an Indoor LTE router. There patented interference cancelling algorithms combined with Beam forming and combining technologies, allows for high quality, high availability connectivity with low latencies.

Thanks for your response.
What sort of latencies can be expected on fortnite for example?

 

[Big Destroyer]

So MTN use the unlicenced spectrum that the public uses for security CCTV systems, WISPs and even home wifi routers. Did it ever come to the attention that the noise and interference this will cause to above mentioned devices? There is already so little spectrum available in the 5GHz range where half of 2/3 is taken by DFS channels not being allowed to be used

 

[Big Destroyer]

Tarana (taranawireless.com)

Google, among others, has been trialling this kind of thing for a while. It's not LTE with QoS attached to it, it's a superset of WiMax technologies. The standard is IEEE 802.16. Crystal Web was running a trial of Google's topology, and several other ISPs and WISPs locally have a similar thing. Herotel Fusion is the same idea, but on a smaller scale, but it is a single point-to-point connection.

This is different from the fixed wireless solutions currently available. Basically it's a mesh network, where every client endpoint is a MIMO antenna that uses reserve bandwidth to pass through signals intended for other clients. If you need 100Mbps of bandwidth, you'd probably get that from at least two other clients.

https://www.taranawireless.com/static/media/Tarana-firsts.f6bc572a.mp4

It's probably "as good" as fibre, and at least better than LTE which is heavily contended. This does present some drawbacks, however.

If there are no clients near you that have battery backup, while you do, your connection is going to be inconsistent to nonfunctional depending on how far away you are from the tower during load shedding. Bandwidth should at least be reserved for you so that your connection is uninterrrupted while your AP serves as a piggy-back point for other clients.

Given the use of the ISM band, there are some interference risks from drones, but this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Line-of-sight to at least two other clients is probably required for the best signal, and to the tower if you're the first one to sign up. Although, being the first client is probably not a great experience if you're too far from the tower.

Latency will also be higher than fibre, but not by a significant margin. Probably highs of 10ms and minimums of 5ms depending on how many hops you need to make.

That's how I also understand the concept that they are going to use, however the large scale of this will ruin the public spectrum completely