Fastback Networks' hyper-focus on latency is starting to pay off as more and more advanced technologies rely on super-low latency.
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Fastback's Intelligent Backhaul Radio ensures a financial services firm in lower Manhattan gets its high-capacity connection. (Image source: Fastback Networks |
Low latency is a cornerstone of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and LTE-Advanced, and that's "in the heart and soul of the architecture for our technology," as well as at the heart of the 40-plus patents that Fastback possesses, Fastback Networks CEO and founder Kevin Duffy told FierceWirelessTech.
Fastback recently announced it worked with managed services firm Perseus to deploy its Intelligent Backhaul Radio (IBR) to support a top financial services firm in lower Manhattan. It extends fiber-based services via wireless connectivity with full service level agreement (SLA) support. The site for the deployment is surrounded by fully obstructed non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions.
"We're bouncing energy off of the Freedom Tower, and it's doing a sort of wrap around the buildings" and the energy is finding its way to the customer's site, Duffy explained.
While plenty of radios can do NLOS, "there's not another radio in the world right now that can simultaneously do non-line-of-sight at the speed and the range and the latency and the feature set that we do. We're in a class of ourselves," Duffy said. "We have non-line-of-sight but no super-low latency, non-line-of-sight competitors."
Fastback expects to see more customers in vertical industries that demand low latency. In financial services, for example, a lot of attention has focused on the timing of trades, so the faster a transaction can take place, the better.
"We have a pretty good body of evidence. It's not some tom foolery or trickery where we're just clipping the edge of a building. We believe we're actually reflecting off of the Freedom Tower. We're doing a lot of energy pointing away from the target, and counting on a multi-path environment," he said. "We're actually going around the buildings that are between the source of the Internet and the destination of those customers, so it's unequivocally, non-line-of-sight."
The company works with Tier 1 operators, but those deals remain confidential due to competitive reasons. Fastback's solution is fully compatible with VoLTE. Plus, with all the attention on low latency in discussions about 5G, it could be in higher demand over time.
According to a press release, a wireless link became an immediate and urgent requirement for Perseus' financial services client when its fiber connection was scheduled for termination and complications delayed a timely replacement connection. Even with two city block-sized buildings obstructing the wireless path, Perseus was able to establish the high-capacity connection in less than an hour using the IBR.
For more:
- see the release
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