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900mhz...what's old, is new again... http://www.tessco.com/yts/partner/manufacturer_lis t/vendors/motorolacanopy/wireless_platform.html

No, it's not an acomplishment at all (unless you count making a pointless press release as an accomplishment).

5km is nothing, total cake.

Off the shelf, cheap, WiFi gear that can easily do twice that -> http://www.tranzeo.com/

Big bad antennas that do much, much, more -> http://www.tessco.com/

Both are plenty "Commercial"

--e

One thing to be careful of. These repeaters always use omnidirectional antennas (not uniderectional Yagis). If you are a CDMA customer (Verizon and Sprint in the USA) the provider will shut you down if you use a Yagi. The principle of CDMA is that all phones are balanced to the same signal strength. CDMA phones all transmit on the same frequencies at the same time and the tower will command your phone to reduce signal if it drowns out other customers. If your phone reduces its signal but is still too strong, the Verizon "Can you hear me now?" guy will find you and shut you down.

GSM is more forgiving to Yagi users but they still do not like it.

Keep the omnidirectional antenna the repeater set came with and you won't get in trouble. The vendor the other poster mentioned sells repeaters that are not only approved by the mobile phone providers but are also used by the mobile phone providers.

Keep in mind that I'm not describing a picocell or microcell, merely a local mobile phone repeater unit.

One thing to be careful of. These repeaters always use omnidirectional antennas (not uniderectional Yagis). If you are a CDMA customer (Verizon and Sprint in the USA) the provider will shut you down if you use a Yagi. The principle of CDMA is that all phones are balanced to the same signal strength. CDMA phones all transmit on the same frequencies at the same time and the tower will command your phone to reduce signal if it drowns out other customers. If your phone reduces its signal but is still too strong, the Verizon "Can you hear me now?" guy will find you and shut you down.

GSM is more forgiving to Yagi users but they still do not like it.

Keep the omnidirectional antenna the repeater set came with and you won't get in trouble. The vendor the other poster mentioned sells repeaters that are not only approved by the mobile phone providers but are also used by the mobile phone providers.

Keep in mind that I'm not describing a picocell or microcell, merely a local mobile phone repeater unit.

My boss has a wireless account with Verizon, and a self-contained PCMCIA device to access it. All-you-can-eat bandwidth from wherever you happen to be in the US that you can see a tower from for ~$70/mo.

It seems reliable, and fast enough that I didn't get pissed off doing typical web browsing.

For double-extra-special bonus points, add an external antenna.

Or, just go ahead and do the Wi-Fi thing. Might be cheaper, and is sure to be faster and less available.

Build an antenna, or buy an antenna, or whatever.

If I were feeling cheap, I'd start with a cell phone antenna and then cut it to length for the correct frequency. If I were feeling spendy, I'd buy a high-gain omni from Tessco and invest a lot of time mounting and cabling it.

Then just plug the kit into your Proxim/Orinoco/Lucent card, drive to town, and waste half a day looking for a legitimate hotspot.

Mesh wireless networks sound good in theory, kinda like microkernel OS's ;p, but in practice they have been unworkable to this point. Nokia bought a company, whose name I can't remember, for this type of product, Nokia called it Rooftop. The previous company had spent more than 4 years in development, and Nokia pumped in enough cash to add another year or so, but the product was a technical failure. Our company was already experienced deploying wireless systems (Alvarion/Breezecom and Orninoco) so we liked what Nokia had to say about the product and we gave it a try. The system proved to be totally unusable, the customer prem equipment often couldn't figure out which way to send traffic if the node it was previously using went away. I don't think that a mesh system is totally unworkable, but I do think its more complicated than most people think. Nokia has already removed the info from their site, but

google cache here

Tessco was Nokia's reseller on the line and they still have info and pics on it here

Please note: I run a regional semi-rural ISP - we do this kind of work every day.

The trick with wireless broadband is usually that you are in an area that is seen as "unfashionable" to the large regionals and nationals.

Find yourself a local ISP - somebody that has some bandwidth and a bit of a DIY attitude. The gear to provide a point to point 2mb connection including antenna, cable, lightning arrestor, radio and short mast is less than $1000. The demarcation on both ends is ethernet. Note that you do need visual and radio line of sight as this gear doesn't go around corners well. Here's a good shopping list / procedure guide:

• find an ISP with an office or POP within about 5 miles of you - you need to be able to see his roof from your roof or you'll have to buy a tower
• arrange with the ISP to purchase bandwidth delivered at his POP as ethernet
• purchase equipment:
  • 2 Teletronics 2mb 802.11 access points
  • 1 Linksys etherfast cable/dsl router (1 port)
  • 2 24db grid antennas
  • 2 2.4GHz capsule type lightning arrestors
  • 2 teletronics to N-Female jumpers
  • 2 lengths LMR600 M-M suitable to reach from radio location to point where the cable leaves the building
  • 2 lengths #6 ground wire to reach from lighting arrestor (mounted on outside of building where cable enters building) to the ground in a straight line
  • 2 copper lug clamps to connect ground wire to body of lightning arrestor
  • 2 8 foot copper clad steel grounding rods with clamps
  • 2 10 foot sections 1" schedule 80 metallic water pipe
  • 2 sections of LMR600 M-M to reach from the lightning arrestor up to the antenna
  • high quality electrical tape (Scotch 33)
  • butyl rubber fusion tape
  • UV resistant (black) cable ties
  • misc mounting hardware
• Install gear on buildings
• set one AP in AP mode, set the other in infrastructure mode
• set up IPs
• surf fast!

This will give you serious net connectivity at a very reasonable price (compared to a telco T1, you'd see payback within about 2 weeks) in a way that is easy for both the ISP and you to deal with.

Here's the connection sequence starting from the ISP running to you:

• connect ethernet from ISP's hub/switch to teletronics radio
• connect teletronics to N-Female jumper to radio
• connect first length of LMR600 to the jumper
• drill 7/8" hole and pass cable outside
• attach cable to correct port on lightning arrestor (usually marked "to radio")
• attach grounding lug to lightning arrestor and mount on building exterior
• attach ground wire and drop to ground
• hammer ground rod into the ground (this might take a while)
• attach grounding cable to ground rod
• attach antenna feed cable to lightning arrestor
• wrap the lighting arrestor and cable ends completely in the scotch 33 tape
• wrap the taped connection in the butyl rubber fusion tape - follow package instructions
• wrap again with scotch 33 TWICE
• mount mast to roof
• run cable up on roof and up mast cable ties where necessary
• mount grid antenna per package instructions (some assembly is required - these are usually 2 feet by 3 feet
• visually align antenna with other site
• fine tune alignment with AP software
• once alignment is confirmed, tighten everything down and wrap the antenna connector as described above

At your end, follow the same instructions, just add the linksys in as a NAT connection between your network and the public IP you got from the ISP.

There are a few other little tips and tricks - if anyone needs help, email me.

There are other product offerings that will work just as well, but only the teletronics gear is this cheap and has been field proven in this kind of environment with no 'engineering' assistance.

For a good topical discussion on this, join-isp-wireless@isp-wireless.com be careful though, this is a high volume list.

Most of what you need can be had from www.wpcs.com or www.tessco.com.