Fixed wireless access (FWA) broadband

funnyname

I currently get my broadband connection via a this technology. I've had it for the past year and bar a bit of a glitch it's be very good with low pings and ok upload and download speeds.

I tried to get an eircom connection which I thought would be a breeze given there was a telephone connection at the house when we moved in but no room at the exchange for a paired line hence the reason we went with FWA.

FWA is used throughout Ireland with many different providers, from what I see most are local with digiweb the only national company.

So with the technology being fairly standard the big difference between the offerings across the country seems to be price and speed.

I am with Airwire (Galway) and they start of at

1/1 for €30

to

5/5 for €250 + vat

A friend in Donegal is with NWE who have packages which include

10/2 for €25

and

50/10 for €33

With the extensive network of fibre across the country via Irish Rail, ESB Telecom, UPC, etc. How come there are such massive difference in price and speed.

What is/are the main driver/s for the cost of providing a FWA service?

Big Lar

The old 2.4Ghz gear maxed out at around 10Mbs max and a lot of providers still have that infrastructure in place which limits the amount of bandwidth that they can give users.

5Ghz gear has been around for the last few years and offers 150Mb capacity but it costs big bucks to upgrade all current users so thats a restriction in itself.

Down the road thou: Wireless gear is now moving to 24Ghz which offers up to 1.4Gb throughput, this coupled with bandwidth getting cheaper should see a major lift in FWA packages and lower prices for the consumer.

On the other side of the coin, most people dont want speed and the majority of users are happy with 1Mb so there is no demand for faster speeds, anything over 3Mb makes no difference for web browsing. In urban areas there is major competition and speed seems to sell although most users will never use it.

According to the websites your friend is on a package with 48:1 contention and you are on a 16:1 contended package, so the question is does your friend really get 10Mb or is just that the hand is quicker than the eye ?

funnyname

Thanks Lar

So things can improve, I just hope Pat Rabbitte and co don't mess things up and go gun ho for LTE at the expense of FWA.

My friend seems to be very happy with his connection and at that price I wouldn't mind that it was 48:1 rather than 16:1.

Big Lar wrote: »

The old 2.4Ghz gear maxed out at around 10Mbs max and a lot of providers still have that infrastructure in place which limits the amount of bandwidth that they can give users.

5Ghz gear has been around for the last few years and offers 150Mb capacity but it costs big bucks to upgrade all current users so thats a restriction in itself.

Down the road thou: Wireless gear is now moving to 24Ghz which offers up to 1.4Gb throughput, this coupled with bandwidth getting cheaper should see a major lift in FWA packages and lower prices for the consumer.

On the other side of the coin, most people dont want speed and the majority of users are happy with 1Mb so there is no demand for faster speeds, anything over 3Mb makes no difference for web browsing. In urban areas there is major competition and speed seems to sell although most users will never use it.

According to the websites your friend is on a package with 48:1 contention and you are on a 16:1 contended package, so the question is does your friend really get 10Mb or is just that the hand is quicker than the eye ?