Wet Country Wireless; How British Weather Killed a Billion Pound Tech Company
1–10 of 58 posts
Re: Wet Country Wireless; How British Weather Killed a Billion Pound Tech Company
#2Warning: long-winded story with catchy title which is misleading. The only reference to weather is that the service was "dropping out during wet weather." No further explanation is provided. They also cite another problem due to "tree foliage", but this has nothing to do with weather.
Re: Wet Country Wireless; How British Weather Killed a Billion Pound Tech Company
#3In Sweden that sector died as the fiber network was extended. It did fill a niche that shrank as fiber was laid down.
Re: Wet Country Wireless; How British Weather Killed a Billion Pound Tech Company
#4Warning: long-winded story with catchy title which is misleading. The only reference to weather is that the service was "dropping out during wet weather." No further explanation is provided. They also cite another problem due to "tree foliage", but this has nothing to do with weather.
both contain water.
Re: Wet Country Wireless; How British Weather Killed a Billion Pound Tech Company
#5From a last mile 3.5, 3.65 and 5.x GHz band WISP perspective, wet weather isn't what killed that, but overall better radios from the competition, for PtMP access to AP radios:
ubiquiti (rocket M5 and 5ac, and associated family of radios)
cambium pm450 and cambium's 802.11n and ac based radios
mikrotik radios
various telrad, radwin and other vendors' 802.16e based stuff (now obsolete, but wasn't quite so in 2015)
those ionica things are so weird, rare, were manufactured in very low volumes and cost way too much. these devices are from a much earlier era, around the same time as the cambium (motorola) FSK100 series PMP radios. they never achieved any significant market penetration in the global low-budget WISP equipment market.
Re: Wet Country Wireless; How British Weather Killed a Billion Pound Tech Company
#6Warning: long-winded story with catchy title which is misleading. The only reference to weather is that the service was "dropping out during wet weather." No further explanation is provided. They also cite another problem due to "tree foliage", but this has nothing to do with weather.
PtMP 3.5 or 3.65 services should never be implemented with non line of sight, or through trees. In a typical TDD airtime system, no matter what it is, one client out of twenty on an AP radio with poor signal (let's say, -77 on both chains) will consume more air time and drag down the performance of the entire AP. There's a reason why all the deployment guides for modern WISP PTMP radios are quite insistent on true clear fresnel zone between CPE radio and AP.
But if I had a dollar for every shoddy 802.16d-2004 or 802.16e based WISP trying to shoot through thick foliage or even install CPEs inside peoples' windows....
Re: Wet Country Wireless; How British Weather Killed a Billion Pound Tech Company
#7Was expecting to read about Rabbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_(telecommunications)
which was another failed wireless communication venture and think DECT roaming for a quick grasp of what they offered.
Can't say I had heard of the company in the article, though living inside the M25, you are kind of bubbled from internet offering choice limitations.
Re: Wet Country Wireless; How British Weather Killed a Billion Pound Tech Company
#8I used to work in that Ionica building (after Ionica left). Like Ionica, the building design was cutting edge but didn’t live up to expectations! The ‘smart’ building used computer controlled cooling towers, vents and a giant block of concrete (as a ‘thermal battery’) to manage the heating and cooling, in place of regular air conditioning. The building ran on an ancient OS/2 desktop computer - I wonder if it is still functioning?
But the system didn’t work very well at all - in winter, it was freezing cold, and in summer it got too hot. Ironically, you could open the windows by your desk to get a cooling fresh breeze of air, but then the building manager would come around and complain that you had to shut the windows, they were disrupting the ‘smart ventilation’ airflow!
Re: Wet Country Wireless; How British Weather Killed a Billion Pound Tech Company
#9I used to work in that Ionica building (after Ionica left). Like Ionica, the building design was cutting edge but didn’t live up to expectations! The ‘smart’ building used computer controlled cooling towers, vents and a giant block of concrete (as a ‘thermal battery’) to manage the heating and cooling, in place of regular air conditioning. The building ran on an ancient OS/2 desktop computer - I wonder if it is still…
My office has a similar system but in a very simple version. It's just for cooling and constantly pulling air out of the basement into the offices. For a few weeks in the beginning of summer it's working fine but after the basement heats up, it's just shuffling hot air around until the building manager remembers to shut it down. The old building manager was quite good at turning it on at night and off by day to cool the building in summer nights.
I remember reading somewhere that this system had been built again in Germany by a larger corporation that issued a PR statement about that but I cannot find it anywhere.
Re: Wet Country Wireless; How British Weather Killed a Billion Pound Tech Company
#10Warning: long-winded story with catchy title which is misleading. The only reference to weather is that the service was "dropping out during wet weather." No further explanation is provided. They also cite another problem due to "tree foliage", but this has nothing to do with weather.
both contain water.
"contains water" wouldn't normally be enough to suggest something is weather, but this is Britain so it's actually a reasonable comment.