Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cshelton | Hacker News Reader

I don't have a lot of time, but I'll say this.

The future of Telco is not in the ground, but through the air. This is the entire reason Google Fiber acquired WebPass.

It is relatively simple to transmit extremely high connection speeds through radio waves. I have a receiver on the top of my house that is a point to point signal, pumping 1 gig +, and soon to be much higher, speeds.

Google's strategy to expand GF will not longer include a massive ground infrastructure move, but use point to point to get to the neighborhoods. An entire zip code can be offered GF services at a fraction of the cost and a few months, as opposed to the old way...TOS of capital and years.

It will happen fast, and I imagine the giant Telcoms will have to follow suite to keep up.

View on HN

The trees say no.

Folks have tried high-speed fixed wireless for almost 2 decades now, and the only places it has been a viable business are rural areas where hard lines are not an option. Once the housing density gets above a certain level, wires beat wireless for any fixed installation--higher speeds, better reliability.

At very high frequencies, basic physics is working against you. Nothing has changed that.

> I have a receiver on the top of my house that is a point to point signal, pumping 1 gig +, and soon to be much higher, speeds.

To get a point-to-point signal, I would need a ~20m mast on top of my house to clear neighborhood trees, and so would the central antenna, and so would all my neighbors.

Radio waves are shared with everyone. High frequency waves don't travel that far. That is physics. There is only so much bandwidth available in the Air. You can high frequency point to point communication, but you might have interference when some one blocks points. Fiber and copper are much better for signal transmission. They just transmit and receive much better than air.

60ghz, 80ghz, and higher frequencies (i.e. free space optics operating at or near the visible light spectrum) change the story considerably.

As frequency goes up and wavelengths get pencil thin, issues like "do I have clear line of sight" and "is there fog today" are more of a challenge than interference from others using the same frequencies/wavelengths.

There's plenty of bandwidth available in RF, but every option has it's tradeoffs. There's a limited amount of spectrum available at frequencies with convenient propagation properties for certain use cases.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com