Posted: 12/23/2013 12:06:11 PM EDT
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I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm opening a can of worms here I'm sure...
I'm out in a countryish area a few miles outside of the nearest town with reasonable internet access. Right now paying about $175/m for access via verizon LTE. The speed (10-45mbps) and latency (~60ms) isn't terrible but the data limits (35gb/m) kills me ($10/gb afterwards). I'm willing to pay more for sure if it removes the limited or greatly expands them. No existing WISPS I can find in the area. Theres a 200ft cell tower owned by Crown Castle thats LOS a mile away. Looks like it has 3 carriers on the top and something very small mounted about half way up. I'd like to know what sort of trouble it would be to get an antenna mounted about halfway up and connected to internet or fiber to take me into a datacenter. I'd be looking at mounting something like this (24GHz and 25"x16"x12") or a smaller dish (2.4/5ghz). I do have plenty of datacenter and fiber carrier experience. |
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Here in SWVA the starting rates are $400 per month for tower space. That is not including power, generator or UPS backup, internet or telco interface etc. That is all extra. You would also have to pay for one of the Crown Castle installers to put the antenna on the tower.
I have been doing research on GMRS repeaters and the above came from someone that works for one of the tower companies in the area. |
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No existing WISPS I can find in the area. What area are you in? just a general area is ok. I know some people in the business that and access to some coverage maps. Some areas have more coverage than you think but might require a creative installation on your end. |
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That's certainly a populated area, I'm surprised Shentel doesn't have any kind of ground based Internet service in the area. No cable service or DSL in my neck of the woods. 
I've heavily explored options. I've been in this situation for 5 years though I only moved to this location a year ago. I've been looking to see if I can find someone who can get some sort of service I can beam back to my location. But thats hard to find and getting someone to go along with it is just as hard. |
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How about that cute alien on the recent TV commercials? Yeah, I know latency from space is bad...
http://www.exede.com/ |
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For the towers we have leased space on, the lease agreement (cost) is usually determined by the height of the antennas. Some provide purchased A/C, others require us to install. You will be responsible for any rack equipment and UPS. You will be expected to have a clean installation if you are in a colocated building.
Are you certain that you can get some type of wired connectivity at the tower to connect to the ubiquiti? We have some of the ubiquiti nanostation and powerbridge radios in service and they have performed well for our needs. We mostly use them for sub 1km shots where we can't run fiber. I currently have some at .3km running around 300Mbps. This is probably going to be plenty for any ISP service you are able to get. I have researched the airfiber units and they are very susceptible to rain fade even at 1.5km. If you get some type of wired connectivity at the tower, it isn't going to be gigabit. I would suggest not installing the airfiber units and instead installing the rocket M with a yagi or a nanobeam/nanobridge. These will backhaul plenty of bandwidth at 1.5km compared to what you are going to get from an ISP at the tower. Another thing is to make sure you are able to remotely factory reset the radios from the gound. The ubiquiti's have a specific PoE injector that has the reset option on it. This will save you from needing to have a tower crew to come out in case you screw up a configuration. If you have the ability to perform some type of spectrum analysis from your location toward the tower it would be helpful in selecting which frequency band you purchase the radios in. It would suck to purchase the 2.4 radios and pay a tower crew to install it only to find that there is already a lot of 2.4 traffic in that area. The tower owner should be able to give you a hint of what the existing tenants are running. Another thing to think about on the tower contract is some type of language that protects you from a future tenant's equipment causing interference. This should be standard and the tower owner will likely already have this in the contact, but it wouldn't hurt to ask if you don't see it. I hope everything works out for you, but you are probably in for a sticker shock on the monthly cost of leasing the tower space. Let us know how it turns out. |
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I hope everything works out for you, but you are probably in for a sticker shock on the monthly cost of leasing the tower space. Let us know how it turns out. For everything you said I figured as much. But I like people with harder knowledge on the subjects to help confirm what I suspect. I know all about the ubiquity gear and the (possible) availability of fiber and whatnot so I am completely prepared to use something else. Since most of my neighbors are in the same boat as I - I might consider something less directional that they can also hit. |
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The ubiquiti rocket M radio will mate with a sector antenna that could provide coverage to multiple parties if you were looking to split the cost and start a small WISP on the side. Every endpoint or Customer Premises would have a radio capable of talking to the rocket M and you would be operating a point to multippoint network. We do this with the motorola canopy line of radios quite often in our network.
You would probably need to think about how you are going to regulate the available bandwidth between parties if you go that route. I believe that the airOS that ships with the ubiquiti radios have some type of bandwidth management built in that might suffice. |
| You may be able to have a provider to run fiber to you cheaper than going on the tower. I am on the provider side and there are quite a few sites that are close to a tower and the customer just had to pay for the fiber from the tower to their location. Usually they use cwdm. I have a few sites that three carriers are on a tower and there are a few customers off of that run that are ran on the frequencies that the carriers are not using on the fiber. |
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You may be able to have a provider to run fiber to you cheaper than going on the tower. I am on the provider side and there are quite a few sites that are close to a tower and the customer just had to pay for the fiber from the tower to their location. Usually they use cwdm. I have a few sites that three carriers are on a tower and there are a few customers off of that run that are ran on the frequencies that the carriers are not using on the fiber. I don't have access to all the fiber maps in the area but the ones I can find are miles from my location. Whatever that tower has would have to cross through a farmer's property, an interstate, a waterline supplying a whole city, and two high pressure natural gas lines to get here. Theres another power two miles up the road from me. Judging by whats on the tower I think they are wirelessly backhauling everything on that tower. I'll take a closer look though. But you have a good idea. I'll have to search again for it. ETA - If anyone can find me fiber around the intersection of I66 and I81 (around Middletown/Strasburg VA) thats about where I'm at. |
| You may look at http://www.windstream.com/. We are currently looking into them as a tertiary ISP for one of our data centers. |
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You may look at http://www.windstream.com/. We are currently looking into them as a tertiary ISP for one of our data centers. Windstream, along with L3, zayo, lumos, and cavalier, all have fiber down a road 9 miles away. Though they may all just be sharing the same fiber run. Lumos also has something 5 miles away. Theres a major cell site 3 miles away. Wonder what they are using. |
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Windstream, along with L3, zayo, lumos, and cavalier, all have fiber down a road 9 miles away. Though they may all just be sharing the same fiber run. Lumos also has something 5 miles away. Theres a major cell site 3 miles away. Wonder what they are using. Quoted:
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You may look at http://www.windstream.com/. We are currently looking into them as a tertiary ISP for one of our data centers. Windstream, along with L3, zayo, lumos, and cavalier, all have fiber down a road 9 miles away. Though they may all just be sharing the same fiber run. Lumos also has something 5 miles away. Theres a major cell site 3 miles away. Wonder what they are using. Could be fiber, copper, or an RF backhaul. Who knows? I can't imagine paying for fiber at a residential location based on the pricing I know we get for dark fiber. I think our pricing is fairly reasonable based on the ROI of our stations, but you would have to be loaded to break out $ a month for residential internet service. I am assuming that ATT does not have any copper to your location that could be used for an MPLS circuit? You will be bleeding out the nose for DS1 speeds, but they might be able to provide a bundle at a discount (3xDS1 = ~4.5Mb service). We do this in some locations where we cannot get an ethernet circuit. |