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WiBE Shared Hotspot Pitched For Rural Broadband in UK

Posted by timothy on from the until-the-cows-come-home dept.

justice4all writes "A British company claims to have solved the problem of delivering a reliable broadband connection to people in rural communities. Deltenna has developed a small, self-installable gadget called the WiBE (Wireless Broadband Enabler) that uses the 3G mobile network to create a 2Mbps web hotspot. The device sounds similar in concept to devices like Novatel's MiFi, but Deltenna claims it works even in places where a 3G mobile phone wouldn't register a signal. The WiBE has five times the range of a 3G dongle, and can deliver 30 times data throughput compared to a 3G USB modem dongle, Deltenna believes."

3 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Slashvertisement by sortius_nod · · Score: 4, Informative

    It all seems like a bit of a double up.

    While I'm no fan of Telstra here in Australia, they have recently trialed LTE at 75km using Nokia Siemens Networks equipment.

    http://www.itnews.com.au/News/215787,telstra-lte-trial-100-mbps-wireless-over-75km-cell.aspx

    I know I'd prefer 100Mbps peak (88Mpbs average) over 2Mbps.

  2. Re:Slashvertisement by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yup, I have. My mother lives in north Devon, the land that time forgot. It took them ages to roll out ADSL, so until last year I'd use my mobile phone for Internet. GPRS reception was pretty poor, but it was faster than a modem for transfer (2 second RTT sucked though). UMTS reception is a lot better. The house has very thick walls that block the signal, but if I put the phone near the window I get a strong signal and can get 50KB/s downloads with around 200ms RTT over that. I don't think they've rolled out HSPA (or LTE) yet. Now they have ADSL, I can use their WiFi. I get downloads of 50KB/s. The latency is better than the UMTS connection, but the speeds are the same (and some of the latency may be caused by the bluetooth hop to my phone - I'm not sure how that compares with WiFi).

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  3. Re:Slashvertisement by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 2, Informative

    Try this: http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?x=0&y=0&z=0&cc=gb&net=hu
    That's the map for "3 mobile", IIRC the first to roll out 3G in the UK, and advertise the best 3G coverage.
    See also: Orange, T-Mobile, Vodaphone and O2 (haha).