Wireless broadband(not network)?

[GrandFlash13]

I was at an old friends last night and talking with some guy. He is wanting to start his own ISP and says he has the means to create a wireless broadband service. He says he has transmitters and repeaters that can broadcast up to 25 miles and has capabilities of reaching 55mbits!!! He says that the FCC would be no big deal because it would be on a frequency that does not need to be registered, which baffles me since they are quite particular with anything transmitting more the a few hundred yards. He says it would be more secure than any landline, which I might be able to see because I am guessing you would have to use his nic and those would be encrypted and be the only ones that would work. Now I might not be remembering everything right because we were all drinking and I had quite a few Corona's in me but I have never heard of anything like this before. Just curious if any of you all heard about anything like this because if this is true, it seems really nice.

Thanks

[Bouncer]

He could be talking about one of a number of different technologies. Possibly 802.a based (at 54mbps) However he'd need base stations every fifty feet.

More likely is to run a boosted 802.11b signal at 11mbps on a two hundred foot tower. With the right boost in signal you can cover a 360 degree area up to 26 miles.

However, as nice as that sounds, in reality you have one 11mbps LAN, and you can easily saturate that with a dozen machines all trying to pull files or play games at the same time. There are some other technologies which are coming into development soon. One of the most interesting relies on a solar and batter powered unmanned vehicle basically doing figure eights in the sky at 50000 ft. This would easily allow for a foot print coverage of 30mi or so at 100mbps+ speeds. The military is more likely to deploy this before anyone else. Probably within 3 to 5 years.

Regards,
-Bouncer-

[GrandFlash13]

Do you know of some good websites to read about wireless broadband? There are alot of rural towns in my area with no broadband coming to them anytime soon and this sounds quite intreresting. I have done a little searching with google, but kind of hard to weed out the good sites.

Thanks

[Bob Carrick]

My last big contract was a year long at a start up in Boston who was doing the exact same thing, starting at up to 3mbits to the home, completely mobile, progressing up to 54 mbpits per second. It's not that hard to do but can becomes expensive and wireless doesn't work exactly how you'd expect it at first. The company spent 30 million in 6 months. We where building it Nationwide. It was fun and can be done.