WiBE Shared Hotspot Pitched For Rural Broadband in UK

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."

Comments

So it's an industrialised Mifi?

[RMH101]

Presumably it's an industrialised unit, with proper antennae that allow it to pick up a 3G signal in poor reception areas. OK, nothing too exciting there.
1) What agreement do they have with the phone companies? Presumably they need a special licence to resell their bandwidth?
2) Cost - what's the charging model for this?
3) ...Profit!

Re:So it's an industrialised Mifi?

[RMH101]

Don't remember signing a contract for bread/beer/books either. Common sense has little to do with this - I would be amazed if the phone companies didn't raise legal objections if you were to start a business using standard phone contract SIMs on their network to resell connectivity to other people.
Also, on a cost-per-gig basis you'd almost certainly have to negotiate for a reasonable price for a data plan that wasn't subject to a far-too-low "fair use" policy.

Leeching

[Kupfernigk]

Great idea. Suck all the bandwidth out of the tower.

When O2, curses on its head, first launched the iPhone, I had constant problems with 3G dropout near iPhones. I began to wonder if O2 was somehow prioritising their iPhone customers, or whether they were bandwidth constricted and the iPhone was sucking up everything. Whatever. Change to Vodafone, no more problems.