How we bring high speed broadband to you.We utilise a variety of technologies to bring high speed broadband to our customers, this enables us to break away from the limitations faced by ISPs which use the UK's ageing telephone network to provide their service.
The following are two explanations of how our hybrid wireless broadband system works. One is a basic summary and the latter is a more detailed overview, made for those of you who are interested in the technology behind our success. |
How it works - the basics
We install a fibre link to an area identified as being part of the UK's fibre network; which may be quite some distance from your premises. This acts as the conduit for the large amounts of bandwidth we acquire from the UK's Tier-1 providers.
Via a super-fast and reliable microwave link; we then direct this bandwidth to a receiver centrally located on the top of a tall structure in an area – that could be an office building, apartment complex or a shopping centre. After being processed by various communication equipment (all this happens in the blink of an eye), we re-broadcast the signal from a transmitter on top of that building to a small receiver mounted on the rooftop of your home or business. |
The receiver is mounted either on your TV antenna or a small mast we’ll provide if you don’t have a suitable mast already in place. A cable is run from this mast through your roof and down the wall to a wall plate we’ll install for connection to your compatible router (or one we supply) or direct to your PC. You’re then ready to enjoy blisteringly fast and reliable broadband!
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A more technical explanation
The following explains how we achieve breakneck speeds and low-latency connections where fibre to the actual premises isn’t available.
We install a fibre link (single mode, single strand, multi-spectrum fibre) into an area. This acts as a peer-to-peer (P2P) link to our DC (DC-HSDPA = Dual-Carrier/Dual-Cell) and Transit providers. For redundancy purposes, we acquire transit from the nation’s leading tier-1 providers such as Telia, Cogent and NTT. We then use 24 Ghz microwave backhaul links to beam this bandwidth to a central location within an area; such as the rooftop of a tall building or structure. This backhaul link is symmetrical, low latency and capable of throughput greater than 10Gb/s. |
The signal is captured by our receiver and terminates at a Cisco POP router, which handles routing and IP termination and assignment.
From there, the signal is transmitted through Cisco 3750’s/3560’s/2960’s access switches to the 802.11n and 802.11ac 5ghz radio equipment, then to an array of sector antennas atop a mast on a tall building for re-broadcasting. The signal is received by a small microwave receiver mounted on the roof of the client’s premises. An outdoor rated ethernet cable is run from the mast through to a switch or WLAN compatible router. |