Beam Solutions - Flat Rate in Weeks

Dr.Seagull

with chorus everthing is 3 weeks away then when u ring em again its another 3 weeks and so untill its years later and u have given up all hope

BoneCollector

Yupe! they gave me the same line nearly 2 years ago :eek:

When you visit there site.. maybe they should just put up a sign there saying....

"Broadband internet access available Tomorrow!"

unknown_a38

im bout 15km from malin head(most northernly point) so i take it ill never get this flat rate wireless service from beam solutions.

sceptre

Split the Irish WAN stuff (most of it at any rate) into a new thread

ciderandhavoc

Where on earth did €29pm come from!

FROM BEAMSOLUTIONS SITE:

Service Price
Connection £249.99 €413
Monthly fee (Single) £109.99 €182
Monthly fee (Multi) £199.99 €330
Installer's fee £149.99 €248 (standard installation)*

All prices exclude VAT and other taxes. The connection fee is a one off charge.


*Installation fee is a guide charge, which will be decided by your installer, depending on the complexity of the installation. This fee must be paid directly to them.

Originally posted by Fungus
I have just spoken to some head of Beam Solutions who told me a lot about their flat rate wireless service that they are about to launch in Ireland.

* The service will cost €29 a month
* It will be completly flat rate, always-on
* It will be 100k/sec
* They need 20 people to contact them from a certain radius saying they want the service and then they will put it in the area.
* The equipment will cost €230. 80% of people are expected to choose self-install.
* It will be based on 802.11b
* It will be focused on the consumer market
* They have been in talks with the ODTR, IDA, Department of Finance and have got a licence from the ODTR.
* They are currently setting up their offices here
* He is convinced that Esat, Eircom and NTL will not offer any competing product.

Their website is at www.beamsolutions.net .

(Sorry, I know this has been partically mentioned in other threads)

mike65

They simply have'nt updated thier site which is'nt very impressive, those prices refere to 512 d/l and 153 u/l.

Mike

pete

Originally posted by ciderandhavoc
Where on earth did €29pm come from!

FROM BEAMSOLUTIONS SITE:

Service Price
Connection £249.99 €413

Scroll up about 10 messages and read gurramoks post from monday.

Or just read the Beam site in the first place

"Information about Ireland wireless "roll-out" available July 8th, please register for more information"

JTMan

Where on Earth did the €29 figure come from

Sunday Tribune +
from speaking to Mark personally

BoneCollector

One could probably summise.. that because of the high cost of installation which is to provide you with the hardware.. the ongoing costs at €29pm and a need for at least 20 people within a radius, and running
through a VPN network with upto 100kbs each, could indicate they are setting up a shared bandwidth on a business package?? (is this making any sense!?)

JTMan

Originally posted by BoneCollector
The high cost of installation

80% of us will be using a self-install package apparently

Mark Braxton

Hi,

I have not been online for some time now. I think that I can answer all your question within reasons. The website is not updated for various of reasons. I can tell you once things start to move, it will be fast.

MDR

Hey Mark,

First off let me tell you what we can do for you, with the permission of the rest of the committee I can make the statistics we gathered as part of the survey available to you.There is some quite useful information in there.

Secondily I am sure you are not blind to the Irish Internet situation, I feel that if you are to act, it must be decisively . You have, and I am sure you recognise this, a golden opportunity to make money, lets face it you are in business, there is a wide open market for residental internet and you are well positioned to fill it.

On to my questions, lets us say that in area X you are willing to provide the service as 30 odd people have expressed an interest. You have to setup your satillete downlink somewhere in that area, so what do you do, do you for instance approach an applicant, offer them a cut price deal if they host the satillete dish and extra equipment required to run the node on their property ?

Now, your decision to target smaller towns and villages in the regions initially instead of the large urban areas (all of whom are equally poorly served by the existing providers) interested me. I would have thought for a small company such as yours, the early objective would be to establish a large customer base ASAP ?
Can you explain the reasoning behind this ?

Many Thanks

Ray Kinsella

yellum

Originally posted by mayhem#


Don't want to be a stick in the mud but IrishWAN has been trying to do something very similar for some time now and it's been hard enough to find two people who live within said radius and LOS to each other.
It all sounds like another solution that will only work in urban areas...

If the network is there people will soon start joining. The irelandOffline forum shows that theres huge interest in people getting broadband and always on connections.

Once a point of presence is there it'll start populating once people see it in action.

dahamsta

[ Removed. I give up, I really do. Mark, if you want to be close to 'your people', either open your gob and talk or simply go away. We've been dealing with dicks like O'Really for years, we simply don't /need/ another one coming along with empty promises. Either put up or shut up. Kay? Kay. --adam ]

jmcc

Originally posted by dahamsta
We've been dealing with dicks like O'Really for years, we simply don't /need/ another one coming along with empty promises.

One thing that is bugging me about all these proposed satellite based solutions is that most of them tend to fall over at the satellite headend/internet connection point.

Take Europe-Online for example. A great idea - an asymmetrical network uses phoneline uplink and satellite downlink. The service was almost liquidated recently because it had badly miscalculated the required bandwidth ratio for a given number of users. Thus you had piles of warez dudes and troughers hammering the network so badly that it was unusable during daylight hours. Many of them, I think were on cable modems as well and were using EON to augment their heavily contended bandwidth.

Recently EON introduced their new Skybooster system which provides a more sensible use of available bandwidth and have started to charge for a set number of hours and per minute there after. The offline download facility is still available though.

The single point of failure for any WiFi based system is always going to be the link back into the internet. Thus you will have great bandwidth (assuming line of sight) to the satellite uplink but heavily contended, and as a result, poor bandwidth on internet connections.

Another aspect is that the usage pattern of internet users has changed dramatically in the last few years. It used to be highly asymmetrical with users downloading a page and then reading it and then repeating the process. They also used to download the odd patch or program. Now it is more common to see links saturated with online gaming or troughing whacking CD sized downloads.

The pricing sounds nice but when you start dividing the bandwidth by 10 or 20 it starts sounding as fast as, or as slow as, a dialup connection.

Beamsolutions' test page points to an IP that resolves to a Gilat IP range. Now this would tend to indicate that Beam is basically reselling the Gilat service. It would be interesting if Beam could provide the full connectivity details (internet connections/caching arrangements/contention ratios/number of users during peak hours). Without these very important statistics, it is all just sales hype.

Regards...jmcc

SkepticOne

Personally, I just want to see the service in place so that people can have some alternatives. It's a bit early to start scrutinising their conectivity and technical arrangements, imho. A bit of competition is what we need in Ireland. It does not need to be perfect, people will decide when/if it actually arrives.

I want more companies trying to succeed here. It's been a long time since a new company, not tied to a parent telco has come along to cater to the home market in Ireland.

Mark Braxton

I believe our website will be updated before tomorrow. Here are some of the answer to your questions.

Why smaller areas instead of Dublin or Cork?

We will be running a management system to insure security, bandwidth, global access, and beam up cards (top up). This system needs to be field tested in volume that can be controled.

The other thing that has to be tested is the distance and line of sight. We have developed a product that allows distance of (hopefully) 12 miles but stay in the 100mw transmission in the 2.4Ghz range. Our non-line of sight antenna should be good for
3 miles, but also needs to be tested here in Europe.

Beam is not worry about getting customers and has been sitting on inventory for some time. The UK is opening up at the end of July for this service and we need to deploy very fast there. I can't give you the business strategy that Beam has, but can tell you that Ireland is a focus, but not the main money maker for us.
Many advisor in the company think we need to by-pass Ireland all together.

Testing in north-west ireland.

I've tried to get someone to test this in Letterkenny, but there has been no interest. I have sent part of this email to the donegal news:

****************************************************

So far I have had very little response from the town (Letterkenny) that they need flat-rate high speed internet access. I had stopped my crews to go to Letterkenny as there seems that there is no need. Could you confirm that internet usage is very low in the area.

I will still conduct my testing to a selected number of users of 5 instead of 20 at various distances (1,3,5, and 7 miles). The requirement for test 1 is Line of sight, test 2 is non-line of sight, and test 3 is moving vehicle. All these have worked in the States 2 years ago, but because of the 100mw transmission, we had to modify the equipment to do the distance. BTs test is for 1/2 mile, and they were very happy. I realize that the north-west Ireland may not be a market for this, but the lower half of Ireland has already signed up for this service.

I need to find 5 locations (persons) that would test this at no charge to them for 1 month and 1 location (person) that would allow a satellite dish and radio antenna to be placed on there property (they would also have internet access). Installation of equipment should be completed in two days. The satellite equipment could be ground mounted with mono-pole radio antenna (small area with no construction). Power would need to be provide at the location of the dish (we would pay for the power used - low usage like a pc). We have all the required licenses from the ODTR.

After the test, we can continue to provide the service to our testers for a fee of 29 euro pcm + vat for 100+kbps (always-on, 280-450kbps normally). After the non-response from various sources in Letterkenny, we will not launch it in the area and have canceled the 155mb link for the town. Any help you can provide will help, of course if there is not a need please let me know. My backup is in the Western Isle with the CIT or the Shetland Isle council.

*************************************************
As you can see, the satellitte system is for fast deployment, and we were going to use the bandwidth from the ring in Derry to run Letterkenny. I again can't tell you the partners involved at this time. Some will break the news this week in the UK.

In the UK, we have partnered with Firstnet http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/index.cfm?go=news.view&news=2452

Testing of mobile solution with the UK government will be completed on Tuesday with a three year contract for a 20 station units that roam through out the UK. The system automatic does the cross pole, and channel delay.

So twenty users are not a problem, but then again who said I was using 512 down and 153 up or who said I was using Gilat.

Part of our testing was with Siemens and the stops we did to deploy on-demand high speed internet for the 12 car train over a one month period. This was view by 7000+ high level manages from Ireland (north/south), Scotland, Wales, and England.

I must leave at the moment, I have more pressing duties. I will try to answer all your questions. (don't ask how it works, there is a patent on that, or the detail of how or the business model/sense)

You can address your questions to chronicle@beamsolutions.net

I don't have the time to read all the postings, but will post the question and answers including the ones I can not answer.

What can you do to help?

I need a small number of test site through out Ireland. so speak up and be counted.

The service at the beginning will not be for gaming, terminal server, citrix, pc anywhere, video, VPN should be ok with our new software.

The service is for browsing, FTP, and email until our backhaul is attached.

Thanks
Mark

Mark Braxton

I forgot, before everyone says anything about Aramiska, we are in talks with them to service Ireland.

mayhem#

Originally posted by yellum
Once a point of presence is there it'll start populating once people see it in action.

Oh really?!
So you're suggesting that I should just go ahead and setup a POP even though not a dingle soul has showed any interest in sharing my connection for free?

bkehoe

Originally posted by Mark Braxton
I forgot, before everyone says anything about Aramiska, we are in talks with them to service Ireland.

And what do you mean by that? Aramiska already have installers and resellers in Ireland. They are currently finalising their leasing agreement (ING won't do Ireland), and I'm expecting installation of my Arc3 in around 1 month max. Maybe you could clear that up?

Re non LOS antenna. So how non los is this? Will it go through hills, mountains, etc. Not at 2.4GHz anyway.

So who are you using for your satellite backbone if not Gilat? Aramiska?

Brendan.

jmcc

Originally posted by bkehoe
Re non LOS antenna. So how non los is this? Will it go through hills, mountains, etc. Not at 2.4GHz anyway.

I can think of a few possibilities though some of them involve circular polarisation rather than orthogonal (vertical/horizontal) and are based on scatter techniques. They can be tricky to implement though and they rely heavily on flatplate technology. (It has been a few years since I did any antenna research and design though.)

So who are you using for your satellite backbone if not Gilat? Aramiska?

Well the test page on the website is on a Gilat IP. The latency issue keeps redlighting though. The statement that the service will only be for ftp/browsing/e-mail until the backhaul is attached makes me a bit cynical. Perhaps it will all work out but I'd like to see it working first.

Regards...jmcc

bkehoe

SMC announced such an antenna for 802.11b a while ago, though have ignored emails from some people asking for more info on the 'non-los' part in the title. It wasn't cheap, around UK£150 I think (though then all antennas sold by the wireless equipment makers aren't cheap), but afaik, even such antennas couldn't get a signal through a mountain/hill, which we have a lot of. I've seen a few mentions (non-los antennas seem to be very rare) in mailing lists over the months, and most people seem to think that they'd only help if there are a few trees in the distance, or a building.

Beams satellite service is Gilat, though Mark seems to be saying in his previous message that they wouldnt be using the Gilat satellite, but then his last statement about games basically says that its going to be some sort of satellite. Aramiska are soon going to bring out much faster solutions than the current ones; Arc5 is currently the top package (2Mbit/320k for €900 pm), though speeds of up to 8Mbit down, and higher upload speeds (cant remember what they'll be exactly) are being proposed. It'd be more expensive, though it would be offering a lot more download bandwidth than Gilat, and Mark mentioned Aramiska, so you can't blame me for suspecting it'll be them.

Mark Braxton

OK,

You need to stop second guessing how it works, but help to get test site selected. I have talked to your country men about installing in Malin Head and County of Meath today. They didn't ask about how the service was contructed, but when could they have it. The proof is in the performance.

This is for browsing, ftp, and mail. the first phase will have satellite backhaul from various companies at various rate with the highest rate of 45mbps up and down. So please stop guessing.

802.11b can not go throught mountains or hills. That is way there is non-powered repeaters. Our link budget is 25dB with a total path loss of 122dB and total strenght of 148dB. Effective Radiated Power of 20dB.

Break down of the CPE Kit

Wireless LAN card 802.11b
Pigtail to connect the card with cable
Cable
Antenna modified to Beam's specs
VPN software (WEP turned off)

Average speeds in test in the UK have been 330kbps with 130 users online.

We won't stop download, but control them (slow them down) after 2mb. Average ftp is 120kB per second for the first 150kB.

viking

Originally posted by Mark Braxton
I need a small number of test site through out Ireland. so speak up and be counted.

Hi Mark,

I am quite interested in the proposed service your company is offering. I will shortly (Aug/Sept) be moving to Kinnegad, Co. Westmeath, and I would like to offer my property as a place where you can locate the satellite dish and radio antenna necessary for this service.

FYI: Kinnegad is an area of quite flat land and with a population of approx. 4000+ and growing.

Hope this is of some help to you, PM me for more details if necessary.

Best Regards,

viking

The Cigarette Smoking Man

You'd really wonder why some of the other big Irish telcos don't take this approach. Considering a lot of them have fibre already laid and only need to access the last mile. Take Esat for example with their fibre network already in place, they could throw up a few masts and have this running in a few weeks, plus there'd be none of the disadvantages of a satellite backhaul and games/pc anywhere/ssh/telnet/video etc would all work perfectly. And last but not least, they wouldn't have to pay eircom anything....


http://www.esat.com/map/dublin.asp

sikes

i am located on Killinry Hill looking over Dublin. I don't know if you ever plan on Dublin but i would be very interested in getting this solution.

Regards

SkepticOne

Originally posted by The Cigarette Smoking Man
You'd really wonder why some of the other big Irish telcos don't take this approach. Considering a lot of them have fibre already laid and only need to access the last mile.

It will be interesting to see if this Government towns fibre project will stimulate investment by small wireless companies. That is certianly one of the hopes of the planners of these projects.

Gavin

Mark,

I can propose Naas town as a viable location for your testing. It has a relatively large population, c20,000 and is well located.

I can also guarantee you testing in the local schools, which would allow you penetration to a large consumer base.

You can contact me at gogorman at videsti.com for more information should you be interested.

Gav

Mark Braxton

Hi,

We now have two sites that will be used for testing. Two others are coming to completion to become the other test sites also. We are in need for one more site to start deployment. This will give us 5 test sites which the user can report to you on. After two weeks of testing, we will continue to install cells at a faster pace. I like to thank everyone to make this happen, and we will do are best to not let anyone down.

Once we have comfirm the date of the installation next week, we will let everyone know the locations. The members involved that have been selected can tell you the updates.

Mark

Slaanesh

I am currently living in the "County of Meath" as you put it Mark I would actually be amazed if any form of broadband was offered anywhere near me, I am a few miles outside Navan. I can barely get ISDN.

Slaanesh.