Curvalux to Trial Long Range Fixed Wireless Broadband Tech in UK UPDATE
South Yorkshire-based Curvalux (AirspaceIX) looks set to conduct a new Proof of Concept (PoC) trial for their latest Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) broadband ISP hardware, which is designed to deliver ultrafast broadband speeds over a long range, and with low power consumption.
The company recently signed a major multi-million-pound deal to supply its new system to Globe Telecom in the Philippines, where it will be used to spread faster broadband across rural communities on 7,000 islands. Richard Pak, Curvalux CEO, said: “[We’re] able to transform the lives of families and businesses … by improving their internet connectivity and enabling them to become part of the world’s digitally based economy.”
The aforementioned deal follows an earlier commercial trial, which saw the company’s “last mile” style network kit being used to connect 10 remote villages on Semirara Island. As part of that, their Curvalux Edge Node was installed between 1 to 5km from the users (this flat panel antenna system harnesses the 5-6GHz bands).
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After that, the Curvalux CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) devices were then installed on an elevated basis to provide a better line of sight to the tower and to clear the thick vegetation that would otherwise fade the signals. The customers used an outdoor 5GHz Wi-Fi CPE (this has a 2.4GHz signal for indoor / LAN use) and received “ultrafast” speeds over 100Mbps.
A separate trial of the same Edge Node, which harnessed all 16 of its beams, managed to connect several test sites at a distance of up to 2km from the tower in the city of Manila. The total and simultaneous aggregate throughput achieved was 2Gbps, using Wi-Fi CPEs and smartphones to serve customers. But the total power consumed by the node was just 100 Watts (it’s rated for up to 160 Watts).
Curvalux is also understood to be working on similar PoC projects and trials around the world, including several in the UK, but they have yet to supply us with any details of the latter. The company believes that their kit could also help the UK Government to achieve their £5bn Project Gigabit goals, and such a trial may enable them to demonstrate whether that is really the case.
Overall, the system they’ve developed looks like an improvement on some of the FWA solutions we’ve seen before, which is partly thanks to their patented multibeam phased array beam forming technology. Typically, Curvalux installs 4 APs (Access Points) for each antenna system in a 60-degree sector. Those 4 radios can serve up to 1,000 subscribers simultaneously using vendor-agnostic low-cost user terminals (CPE) in combination with its advanced interference mitigation mechanism.
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The firm currently employs 17 people at their Electric Works site on Sheaf Street in Sheffield, and they’re planning a £20m factory close to the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in Rotherham, which could create 200 jobs. All of this follows last year’s deal, which saw them secure an £8m public grant under the Sheffield City Region scheme, which is helping to fund their growth in South Yorkshire.
UPDATE 6th October 2021
We’ve had a few details back from Curvalux. Firstly, the kit they’re using is currently only harnessing the familiar 5GHz band (despite 6GHz being mentioned on their website), and the CPE used in the aforementioned PoC was actually from MikroTik: “We are currently testing Curvalux proprietary CPE achieving up to 6Gbps in Wi-Fi 6,” said the spokesperson.
The company also recently did quite a useful talk at a UKWISPA meeting:
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I wonder how much their low cost cpe is.
Will they use starlink for internet uplink from their infrastructure in remote locations instead of digging in a wired connection?
This will greatly enhance internet provision to remote and hard to reach communities and realise one of the starlink use cases.
It seems to me that fibre could, in rural areas, be impossible due to obstacles (manmande or natural) or too expensive. So, backhaul might be done using Starlink or perhaps micromave using 5G if spectrum can be obtained.
Wireless does offer a means of doing something very fast that is better than ADSL.
Some have deployed wireless then backfilled with full fibre.
The trouble is that once you take out premises that do not have line of site and you have to put in relay points then the costs rocket. As you keep running into the issue that wireless needs power. If you have power you might as well string fibre on the power poles.
Really honestly and truly I don’t think wireless has got that much use in the UK gigabit rollout, except as a stepping stone, as it requires active powered kit and therefore maintenance. It does, however, have a small subset of viable usage cases.
“site” should have read “sight”
The joys of auto correct mangling sentences.
Well, great for the scenarios they’ve already deployed and propose, ie providing connectivity in remote places, but as for helping project gigabit they are quite substantially below the capability required if all they’ve got is 1-5KM range and 100Mbs
Micran has “Farlink” that is deployed i.e. in Vietnam and in Siberia.The system gives up to 100Mbps LAN speed with nLOS on the 400Mhz frequency spectrum. Then there is also Y-Packet2 nLOS with a range of 80kms on 2,4L & 4U GHz. Y-Packet has been deployed in several African countries successfully.
NTS has Mayak 1000E that has capacity of up to 10Gbps on distances of 1-6 kms on e-band.