Rural ISP, Airband - which got its start over a decade ago as a WISP offering Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) in Worcestershire is now reinvesting time and money into a brand new technology from Tarana to offer much faster speeds to rural customers.
Since its early days, the company has expanded its coverage into more regions in the UK, including Wales, Devon, Oxfordshire and many parts of Shropshire. In recent years, the company has started to diversfy into Full Fibre (FTTP). Its FTTP rollout is purely its own work, not utilising the Openreach network. This means that Airband can get to areas quicker than other providers, or those that are underserved.
However, there are some areas in the UK that don't make economic sense to rollout a full fibre network to and this is where this new announcement comes in. Airband says that it is now the "first operator in Europe" to deploy ngFWA from Tarana. This latest tech is capable of offering customers up to 400mbps speeds over distances of 7km (4.3 miles). What is more impressive is that Tarana just use standard 5GHz spectrum, something other FWA equipment suppliers have used for over 10 years, such as Cambium Networks and Ubiquiti.
Airband has 450 mast sites in the UK and the company is conducting trials with this new technology. As of publishing, five of those masts have had this new equipment installed with the sixth site in Illfracombe to go live in November. So far, Penrhyn Bay, Barnstaple, Bovey Tracey, Newton Abbot and Llangollen have coverage.
Airband have at the same time, rebranded its fixed wireless packages to AirSpeed and for those customers covered by ngFWA, they should see speeds of up to 400Mbps. However, Airband engineers have reported seeing upwards of 600Mbps in initial testing, which over outdoor 5GHz - is incredible as a technical feat alone.
Airband hasn't published or confirmed any plans for additional rollout of this new technology, but you have to imagine that with these kinds of results, that is being worked on.
