AT&T Promising Gigabit Speeds From Utility-Pole Antennas AT&T says it hopes to have its new millimeter-wave wireless broadband service, which will involve using utility poles to mount antennas, up and running in several unnamed cities by the middle of this year. AT&T unveiled its new "AirGig" initiative last September, stating it will be easier to deploy than traditional fiber, using unlicensed spectrum and pole-attached antennas to deliver ultra-fast wireless connectivity to any home or handheld wireless device. AT&T says it has more than 100 patents governing pole-attached, low cost antennas, which it believes could someday deliver speeds upward of 1 Gbps.

Providing an update on the project to the Dallas Morning News , AT&T claims that using utility poles could reduce AT&T's costs by 30 to 70 percent, depending on deals with utility companies (AT&T owns the poles in many cities). AT&T's field trials will launch shortly, providing AT&T some additional insight on how weather can impact millimeter wave technology, and what kind of speeds and pricing AT&T may explore with the service. "You can do it [the testing] in a lab, and you can even do it outside at a lab, but the customers are the ones who are going to tell you whether it's fast enough and if it's the right price," says AT&T exec John Donovan. Donovan has yet to specify any kind of timeline or launch date for the service, but says that "the minute it goes in the field, we are going to be watching it and planning deployment." AT&T's AirGig system would utilize low-cost plastic antennas and devices located along the power line to regenerate millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless signals. Signals AT&T says can be used for 4G LTE and 5G multi-gigabit mobile and fixed deployments. AT&T's solution would mean "low hardware and deployment costs while maintaining the highest signal quality," states the company. "In the past, types of BPL devices were electrically coupled to power lines, and used very low frequencies below 100MHz," AT&T told DSLReports.com when asked about the new technology. "The broadband speeds were very limited and not competitive. We've taken those lessons learned and built on them. With the current innovations we have an extremely competitive technology that can provide gigabit speeds and that does not require electrical coupling to power lines." That said, there's room for skepticism. AT&T has been trying to convince regulators to gut regulations so it can hang up on unwanted DSL lines, in exchange for a somewhat Utopian wireless future that may or may not arrive. The heavy promotion of a technology that never comes to market -- just to frame public perception and assist the overall goal of sector deregulation -- wouldn't be out of character for the policy folks at Ma Bell. AT&T also has a vested interest in portraying the image that it's just as innovative as Google, even if most of that innovation is focused on preventing broadband competition from taking root. That said, the solution is a novel one and if deployed certainly could help speed up deployment of next-generation broadband. You can find more detail on AT&T's AirGig broadband over powerline technology in the full press release and via the video embedded below. »www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· 9OWzv_pw







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Most recommended from 34 comments



djrobx

Premium Member

join:2000-05-31

Valencia, CA 32 recommendations djrobx Premium Member We don't have utility poles All of the wiring is underground. So what wireless utopian future do you have for us, AT&T?



Just run the fiber and get it over with already.

Zenit

The system is the solution

Premium Member

join:2012-05-07

Purcellville, VA 17 recommendations Zenit Premium Member This is crazy. While the AirGig project is interesting from an engineering challenge standpoint, it is not a practical solution. Aerial construction of fiber is the cheapest deployment method of all of the ways to deploy a wired infrastructure. The problem with AirGig is how the radio unit is mounted on the top of the pole, in the power transmission space. This means AT&T will probably need power company help to install these. Maintaining the AirGig units will be a PITA with them being above the power space. Given that it is an active RF device it will need to be worked on from time to time. It's fine when you have a couple small cells on poles, but when every (or nearly every) pole needs a wireless device on top why not just run fiber between the poles?



Any cost savings by avoiding the use of cable will be negated by the above disadvantages.



AirGig is sort of a distributed architecture, too many active nodes in the path. One goes down and half the street goes down?

The idea seems nice at first but when you think about it the AirGig concept is flawed at best; overly complex, dangerous to install and maintain, adds visual clutter to a significant number of poles.



The only place I could see this working is long, straight roads in the prairie without trees or inclines. You would probably need less AirGig nodes to cover the street. This has limited use everywhere else.



I do not understand why US ILEC's are still freaking out over the cost of a drop. Thanks to the increasing use of FTTP worldwide the overall cost of the last 100 feet has plummetted. ONT's are much cheaper now than they were in 2005. You can re-use existing coax and twisted pair wiring at the CPE. If the ONT must be installed indoors there are invisible fiber products consisting of extremely tiny, bendable fiber to the ONT. Corning has mastered the splice less Lego-like OptiFit/OptiSheath plant system, you can pretty much build a whole FTTP system from the PFP/Splitter Box/Crossbox with just modular components per-ordered with the right lengths. If they are so worried about recouping the cost of the ONT and drop they can charge rental for it, or make customers put the $300-500 or so up front for service. In places where there is no other service they will get takers. In areas with Cable they need to be more aggressive and eat the drop/ONT cost.



The only thing this AirGig project does is finds a way for AT&T to completely divorce itself of the union labor. That is the only solid justification I can see of this project. It's too crazy to justify in the C-suite otherwise.

hamburglar

join:2002-04-29

united state 6 recommendations hamburglar Member Yawn They'll just cap and meter like the rest of their wireless service.

Anona9929

@spcsdns.net 6 recommendations Anona9929 Anon Uh huh Ever notice whenever att wants to spread it's pr bs it always uses that same news site , The Dallas Morning News, and that same site NEVER does follow ups just happy to spread their lies.

maartena

Elmo

Premium Member

join:2002-05-10

Orange, CA 4 recommendations maartena Premium Member Even if it isn't a Gig.... 100 Mbps would go a long way in delivering broadband to smaller, rural communities.... tabernak93

join:2015-02-16

Oklahoma City, OK 4 recommendations tabernak93 Member It has uses I know this isn't the ideal solution for everybody, but for lots of rural and hard to reach locations, this could be the cheapest solution. Maintaining thousands of feet of fiber to drop to a few houses is indeed expensive, just having to maintain wireless transmitters on top of readily accessible utility poles can be cheaper. Who knows what sort of redundancy these would feature.



It wouldn't take much for each tower to have 2 transmitters/receivers, have the ability to skip a broken node with the associated loss, have bidirectional paths of transmission, etc. It also wouldn't be surprising if they frequently just ran fiber on those utility poles and each node had its own connection so any outages would be very localized.

Anon7e34d

@2600:1005.x 3 recommendations Anon7e34d Anon At&t is not your friend When will people understand? At&t is not your friend, not interested in serving customers. They are in it for money. If you or I don't like it, they could care less. If we want high speed internet, we will have to build it and pay for it ourselves. Quite frankly, with the exorbitant cost of bits charged by at&t and others, we could probably have a world class system now. Let's dump at&t and the others. Let them find another way to make money where customers don't get in the way. Maybe they'll be good at it. I would think two thirds of the data entering the home is advertising not true content.

Anon2e2f6

@spcsdns.net 3 recommendations Anon2e2f6 Anon It's a con for the Feds and it will work Think about the areas that have poles and you get an idea of the scheme at hand. Newer richer areas for the most part have buried services and sometimes even fttp the only areas still above ground are rural, cities and old working class neighborhoods these are the same areas now served by old dsl with no prospects of fttn and if they do have fttn the bandaids to their loop lengths have been exhausted. First it was bonding pairs, then ip rt, then 17Mhz profiles. This airgig bolony is just the next evolution of bandaid for the telecoms unwillingness to pay for upgrades in areas they don't consider desirable. decifal

join:2007-03-10

Bon Aqua, TN 2 recommendations decifal Member you You can't tell me that putting these damn things on every pole or every other pole is some how better and cheaper than just running freaking fiber??? I call bull$hit on this plan.. Those antennas will not be cheap and will quickly be outdated.. Fiber however will last a long time... smdh wtf att, wtff

ham3843

join:2015-01-15

USA 2 recommendations ham3843 Member Ewww what an disgusting relationship

and Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam have been sleeping together...

how else could both companies come to the same idiotic and

outrageously expensive idea... like AirGig and WiFiOS?



Wow it would appear that AT&T CEO Randall Stephensonand Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam have been sleeping together...how else could both companies come to the same idiotic andoutrageously expensive idea... like AirGig and WiFiOS?

Anon7e223

@comcast.net 2 recommendations Anon7e223 Anon Unlicensed spectrum So AT&T wants to use "unlicensed" spectrum... (Read: free) We see how well the 2.4ghz band is doing in dense areas now imagine that your internet connection relies on an open band that ANYONE can put an AP up in. Your bandwidth should work amazing after there are 50 APs all on the same frequency as your connection and since it's unlicensed AT&T has no control over anything in that spectrum.