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Sussex & Kent Gain £18m BB Boost

Posted: 25th Nov, 2003 By: MarkJ

LTT's broadband wireless wing has today announced an investment of £18 million for next generation technology development and deployment in East Sussex and West Kent:

LTT pumps £18 million into next generation broadband for East Sussex and West Kent

Cable provider LTT has announced an investment of £18 million ($25million) in launching the latest generation of broadband into the UK. First in line to receive the service is East Sussex and West Kent, where many telephone exchanges will not be enabled for broadband services in the near future.

The radio broadband service does not need a telephone line, and can be deployed more or less anywhere. The system, called ARTEMIS, was originally developed by LTT to provide quickly deployable and secure broadband capacity for the United Nations staff working in war zones.

Using 100milliwatt broadcasting power, equivalent to the radio LANs used in many offices and homes, LTT has developed software and hardware to such a degree that they can receive a signal up to 70 km from the original aerial without having to increase the power of the transmitter. This enables signals to be bounced from place to place, and potentially brings even the most remote site into range of a signal.

LTT is using existing spare fibre optic cable capacity to carry the radio signal from a series of base stations around the East Sussex borders. By utilising existing fibre capacity wherever possible, costs are kept to a minimum. Within the region, a series of pico-stations link together and then back to a base station for the connection to the internet. Each pico-station is capable of supporting up to 96 users whilst sending and receiving the radio broadband signal.

We have a low cost of deployment per user, particularly as the radio network begins to overlap and all the traffic can be carried over the pico station links, says Nicholas Harley, director of LTT Broadband Support (UK) Ltd ,sales agent for the system in the UK . This enables us to provide a signal economically, almost anywhere it is wanted.

Technical specification of the radio service exceeds the ADSL broadband that can be provided over telephone lines. In particular, the standard services operate symmetrically with the same speed up to the internet as down from it. This makes the radio link particularly suitable for people hosting webservers and the low latency (time to send and receive a signal) is beneficial for on line gamers.

LTT broadband is available now in Edenbridge and the surrounds, and the signal is being deployed to Penshurst, Hartfield , Withyham. The signal is also being engineered for connection in Buxted, South Godstone , Nutley and Danehill.