Skycom1, a local wireless internet service provider (WISP) in New Orleans, Louisiana, is using MetroLinq unlicensed 60 GHz products from IgniteNet to deliver gigabit connections across the city and surrounding areas.
By using the 60 GHz band, Skycom1 said it’s able to deploy gigabit service faster and more affordably than pure fiber networks.
"We are excited to be rolling out gigabit connections in the New Orleans area," James Ober of Skycom1 said in a press release. “With so many households with minimal or no internet access, New Orleans is in need of more affordable broadband options, and IgniteNet’s MetroLinq platform is helping us to make that a reality.”
IgniteNet has customers all over the world using its MetroLinq product, including Gigabit1 in Puerto Rico provided through the Aeronet Project. With few exceptions, regulators in most countries have made unlicensed 60 GHz available. Its first product was a point-to-point (PTP) only product and the point-to-multipoint (PTM) product is a more recent addition, according to General Manager Harold Bledsoe.
In the case of Skycom1, the 60 GHz base station/access point is fed with another PTP wireless link, which is not IgniteNet. In general, “we see these connected via wireless PTP rings/meshes or by fiber,” Bledsoe told FierceWirelessTech via email. “The fiber case is interesting too because you can run a fiber trunk and deliver the last hundreds of meters wirelessly—significantly faster and lower cost than connecting each premise with fiber.”
RELATED: IgniteNet begins selling its MetroLinq 60 GHz multipoint antenna
Last year, IgniteNet unveiled what it described as the world's first commercial 60 GHz point to multipoint system, the MetroLinq 60 Base Station Sector, representing an expansion of the MetroLinq PTP product family.
The MetroLinq 60 Base Station Sector also includes a second 5 GHz radio which acts as a backup on a client-by-client basis to provide integrated redundancy without any additional hardware or complexity.
IgniteNet repurposes WiGig/802.11ad and modifies it to be an effective tool for WISPs to deliver gigabit internet service.
In the works for many years, WiGig, based on the 802.11ad standard, operates in the unlicensed 60 GHz band and offers short-range multigigabit connections. The Wi-Fi Alliance kicked off a certification program for WiGig last year. Wider channels enable WiGig devices to achieve data rates of up to 8 Gbps, allowing users to download an HD movie in a few seconds.