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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."
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.
Long-haul optical fiber combined with DSL/a reasonably modern landline phone system for more remote sites; taxpayer money funds the backbone, and the goverment (that isn't hideously corrupt and can be trusted not to use the lines to strangle kittens as soon as you take their eyes of them) leases the last mile to private companies. But of course, there's no profit in that, so such a thing can't possibly exist outside of covert communist dictatorships such as those found here in Sweden. And Japan, to take a ideologically neutral example. Actually, both Japan and Sweden's networks came about through cooperation and understanding between the public and private sectors, more than anything else; it would never have been pulled it off as good as it turned out if the gov. actually had appointed a public sector company in charge as ISP.
*Pets his RJ/45 jack connecting to a 100mbps line in an appropriately condescendingly smug manner*
Emotions! In your brain!
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.
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).
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Yeah, and has anyone ever had any reception in a 'rural' area?
This is UK-rural, which isn't really that rural.
See, for example, the yellow bits on this map.
I'd be surprised if it wasn't. You house generally doesn't move about all that much, so it's trivial to point a high-gain antenna towards the nearest mobile phone mast/strongest local reflection. You can even stick in on it's own mast to increase line-of-sight.