Re: Microwave link capacity

[joel jaeggli <joelja () bogus com>]

On 4/4/16 2:28 PM, Jean-Francois Mezei wrote:
> In a context of providing rural communities with modern broadband.
>
> Reading some tells me that Microwave links can be raised to 1gbps. How
> common is that ?

for wireless backhaul of cell-towers, some wisp infrastructure and for
this like inter-building point-to-point connectivity. pretty common.

> I assume that cell phone towers have modern microwave links (when not
> directly on fibre). What sort of capacity would typically be provided ?

an example would be something like

http://www.dragonwaveinc.com/solutions/mobile-backhaul

> And in the case of a remote village/town served by microwave originally
> designed to handle just phone calls, how difficult/expensive is it to
> upgrade to 1gbps or higher capacity ?

well if you're describing at&t longlines or bell canada C-band microwave
relay networks those were built a time when cost was not the primary
consideration, (e.g. there were not signficant alternatives in the 1950s
to 1970s)

>  Just a change of radio ? or radio
> and antenna, keeping only the tower ?

modern radios are dramatically cheaper. use of unii bands or licensed
spectrum are options, distance  and spectrum choices tends to dominate
the set of considerations that goes into selecting a system.

examples of unlicensed being something like

https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber24-hd/

https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/



> (keeping spectrum acquisition out of discussion as that is a whole other
> ball game).

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