After several years of development Facebook’s networking division is finally getting the commercial UK launch of their new Terragraph wireless broadband technology off the ground. This uses a mesh of small cell style 60GHz (mmW) base stations to distribute a gigabit speed broadband ISP connection across communities.<\/p>\n
The idea of using the 60GHz<\/strong> millimeter Wave (mmW) band to create a mesh style outdoor Fixed Wireless Access<\/strong> (FWA) network is a fairly recent development (note: the indoor focused 802.11ad<\/strong><\/a> WiFi<\/a> standard has been using 60GHz for years), although we have seen similar technology being deployed by Broadway Partners<\/a> in rural Wales via the CCS Metnet 60G<\/strong><\/a> platform (here<\/a>) and a few trials with other setups have also taken place.<\/p>\n The use of the 60GHz band enables operators to access a lot of extra spectrum frequency in order to send data, which is excellent for achieving gigabit speeds, except the signals are so weak that they can’t travel very far before losing too much performance (c.250 metres). However by adopting the mesh approach it’s possible to reach further (i.e. each base station acts a bit like an access point and helps to extend the signal for other units).<\/p>\n In other words, a 60GHz mesh FWA network could in theory make more sense in areas where laying optical fibre for FTTP<\/a> would be prohibitively expensive. In that sense Facebook’s rival Terragraph<\/strong><\/a> approach isn’t massively different from the others, except that they have secured significant support from key equipment vendors including Cambium Networks, Common Networks, RadWin, Mikrotik, Siklu, Nokia and Qualcomm.<\/p>\n The strong commercial support for Facebook’s solution, which appears to be a bit simpler than others (based on the WiFi<\/a> standard), is what could help to make this technology much more accessible to ISPs. Trials have already taken place in a number of rural communities, such as via Deutsche Telekom in Hungary<\/strong> where homes achieved ultrafast broadband speeds of 500Mbps<\/strong>.<\/p>\n