Broadband Access Wireless Internet Providers

When we think of wireless Internet, the first thing that comes to mind is WiFi hotspots or 3G & 4G cellular broadband. It’s a mobile Internet technology, right? It is, but did you know that there are also wireless Internet services that are appropriate for fixed business locations like offices and retail stores?

One of the lowest cost wireless broadband services uses the same towers and resources that deliver broadband to your cell phone. Only this wireless service offered by Accel Networks is designed for fixed locations. What Accel has done is contract with major wireless carriers to use their bandwidth. By combining the coverage maps of several carriers, Accel can deliver 3G data rates to most locations that need it. You get similar bandwidth to a T1 line for about half the price. Installation is a matter of days, not weeks or months. Service reliability is 99.9% per the service level agreement.

Who is this service right for? It’s perfect for convenience stores, gas stations and other retail locations that need PCI compliant connection to process credit cards. Traditionally, these stores have ordered DSL, Cable broadband or satellite. When you are not on the path for wireline connections this wireless service can give you the bandwidth you need. You can even order it for temporary holiday locations, conventions and conferences, and construction sites.

Cellular broadband isn’t appropriate for applications where you need large amounts of continuous uploading and downloading. But there are fixed wireless services that are designed for just that. These are dedicated connections using directional antennas on special licensed frequencies for this service. The provider installs a small equipment and antenna box on the outside of your building and runs an Ethernet connection inside for your router. Dedicated fixed wireless can give you DS3 levels of bandwidth (45 Mbps) and replace bonded T1 lines and even lower speed fiber optic connections. The one kicker is that you need to be located near the carriers transmitting location, which is almost always downtown in a major metropolitan area.

Satellite is a two-way wireless service that has been popular with businesses that don’t need high bandwidth levels but do need connectivity in locations that have little to no wireline service and perhaps even no cellular service. These satellites are in geosynchronous orbit, just like the ones that deliver satellite TV service. The difference is that they are providing business broadband service. Satellite has the advantage that you can get service just about anywhere in the US where you have clear view of the southern sky and some way to provide electrical power. It doesn’t even have to be from the grid. Solar and batteries will work just fine.

Satellite and 3G cellular services are bandwidth limited and tend to have caps on the amount of data you can upload or download in a given period of time. They tend to have higher latency than wireline services. Geosynchronous satellites, especially, are unsuitable for such applications as VoIP telephony. But many businesses don’t need a broadband telephone service or video conferencing. What they do need is access to the Internet for email, credit card verification, viewing Web sites, using search engines, reporting inventory and ordering supplies, etc. These activities don’t require massive amounts of capacity or very high speeds.

If you have a business application that needs broadband access to the Internet but haven’t been able to find reasonably priced wireline services that meet your need, get prices and availability on broadband access wireless Internet providers that serve your business location.

Dark Fiber Network Expansion Underway

If there is any doubt that we are a bandwidth addicted society, it should be removed with the announcement that a major dark fiber network project has been launched by Allied Fiber. When finished, it will circle the US perimeter with 548 dark fibers and 300 tower sites.

Fiber optic communications is coming into its own, and this time it’s likely here to stay. Back in the 1990’s, thousands of miles of fiber optic cable were buried in anticipation of a telecommunications revolution that fizzled along with the technology sector in general. There is still lots of unlit fiber laying quietly in the ground, but it’s probably going to get lit sooner rather than later. That telecom revolution looks to be on again.

The original fiber optic cables were installed to support telephone calls. Voice services are the least of the demand for bandwidth anymore. Data is on the rise and rising, but video is the killer app. By that, I mean the app that will kill your network bandwidth faster than anything. Video has morphed from NTSC analog television to HDTV, with 3D starting to gain a foothold. It’s not just television, either. Video means YouTube, Netflix, Telepresence, and mobile. The proliferation of all types of video services have necessitated special content delivery networks that offload the Internet up until the last mile service provider.

The traditional T1 lines that backhaul cellular towers are just about out of capability, now that every smartphone has a data service and everyone wants to download apps on the fly and watch video content while on the go. The next generation of phones will have 2 cameras, one facing out for taking pictures and recording video clips and the other facing the user for 2-way video conferencing. There’s a new bandwidth demand that far exceeds the traditional voice conversation. It’s just as expensive to bury new copper to meet the demand as it is to bury fiber optic cables, so new backhaul will be over fiber.

Independent service providers, content delivery networks, major corporations, medical center networks and scientific research labs are among those users who find that leasing or owning dark fiber assets give them the bandwidth they need, when they need it. Dark fiber is just what it sounds like. It’s glass fiber strands within a cable bundle that haven’t been “lit” or connected to terminal equipment yet. Without a laser light shining through their core, they are truly “dark.” But those who have access to dark fiber, can choose what equipment to connect for the bandwidth and protocols they want to support. If you need more bandwidth down the road, you can use the same fiber by simply upgrading modules in your terminal equipment.

Do you need the flexibility of being able to completely manage your wide area network down to the very terminal equipment at each end? If so, you may want to take a closer look at dark fiber as the most flexible way to connect between locations. Prices are lower than they’ve ever been. You might be surprised by how affordable dark fiber is in special circumstances. Let our Telarus bandwidth consultants consider your applications and offer you an array of solutions that include dark fiber network services.

Wireless Business Broadband Available In A Day

You’re opening a new store this week and everything is all set to go. Construction is done, the fixtures are in place and the shelves are stocked. The announcements have been sent to the media and all that’s left is the ribbon cutting. After that, let the profit making begin. Oh... NO... There won’t be any profit making because there won’t be any sales. The broadband service you were promised won’t be installed for another couple of weeks. Well, that’s what they said anyway. But they said that two months ago. What are you going to do without any connectivity? Is there anything that can jump in and save the day?

Yes there is and you’ll be glad you found out about it. Instead of grinding your teeth or just leaving the doors closed until your DSL or other provider can get around to bringing up your business broadband, get a wireless solution from Accel Networks. It’s highly secure and PCI/Visa compliant, so you can make cashless transactions with confidence. Data rates are typically 768 Kbps to 1.4 Mbps download and 384 Kbps to 512 Kbps upload with solid signals covering 90% of the United States. Best of all, it can be deployed in 1 to 3 business days.

A broadband wireless connection available in as little as a single business day? How come other providers don’t offer that. One word: Wires. No wires means no digging in the yard, stringing pole to pole, or fishing cables through the building. Those are things that take time. Avoid the wires and a good bit of the provisioning time goes away.

Accel offers a wireless solution that cleverly makes use of existing infrastructure. Most WISPs or Wireless Internet Service Providers are very localized and require direct line of sight to their towers. They likely will have to come out and put a dish or other external antenna on your building even if you can see the tower. Accel Networks doesn’t use proprietary towers like your local WISP. They’re using some or all of those cellular towers you see all over town. That's another reason why they need so little provisioning time.

Accel Networks has made agreements with the cellular carriers to use some of the data bandwidth that is available from every cell tower. But rather than limiting their options to one carrier, they’ve contracted with both CDMA and GSM carriers so that their service footprint covers 99% of business locations in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. Their specially designed “Accelerator” customer location equipment is capable of 99.9% availability and network management from Accel headquarters. Installation takes less than an hour from the time your equipment arrives.

What can you do with a wireless network solution? The quick start option to have your business up and running in days, not weeks or months, is an obvious winner. It’s perfect for point of sale terminals in retail stores, quick service restaurants and hospitality providers like hotels and motels. It’s also a fast solution for disaster recovery in any business that can’t function without an Internet connection. Dial-up was once the answer to backing up broadband. But dial-up is just too slow for many applications anymore. Besides, the same disaster that took out your main wireline service might well have knocked out the phone lines as well.

The low capital and operating expenses per location for Accel Network’s wireless has given many businesses the incentive to upgrade from their old VSAT and frame relay connections or their current DSL and Cable broadband services. Accel is and can be the primary network service for restaurants, gas stations, banks, convenience stores and many other businesses. Some businesses have started with a panic call for quick start service and later decided to keep Accel Networks as their primary broadband connection.

Are you in dire need for fast and effective WAN network bandwidth at a reasonable price for a single or multiple business locations? Perhaps you’re just shopping around to see if you can do better than the high cost and unreliable service you have now. Either way, call the toll free number or enter an online inquiry for wireless business WAN bandwidth to get prices and availability.

I Shall Call It Cellular Mini-Me

The stampede from landline to mobile telephone service is only increasing as 3G networks build out to include suburbs and smaller towns, as well as total metro coverage. The BlackBerry is standard business wear. The iPhone is starting people to question whether they really need to be lugging around a laptop computer, since there's a full service Safari browser included. Wireless is oh, so liberating compared to being chained to a desk. You're free to chat, browse, or watch videos to your heart's content, all on the go. That is, until you open a door and go inside.

The indoor dead zone is the bane of wireless transmission. The higher the radio frequency, the shorter the wavelength and the easier it is for things like walls to stop signals cold. Actually, these impediments only attenuate or reduce them in power. But the effect is the same. Now you have a solid signal, now you don't. Satellite TV signals, which are at even higher frequencies than cellular, are easily blocked by even tree leaves or a good rainstorm.

One solution is to move to a lower frequency band. But there isn't much unused spectrum available and there already is a huge investment in the current cell tower network. AT&T and Verizon did snap up the 700 MHz TV channels that were recently auctioned. These frequencies have longer wavelengths and can penetrate buildings better. But even if these are pressed into service, what do you do with the hundreds of millions of phones and thousands of cellular base stations now in service?

Another solution is to increase transmission power to make signals go further. That won't work on the phone side because you really want less power, not more, to increase battery life. Well, how about just putting up more cell sites? Put one on every corner disguised as a street light. Hide them in the trees. Bring them inside and put them in the ceiling.

Wait! That's an idea. Why not bring the cell tower inside the building where the problem is? Not a full size one, of course. Just big enough to cover the dead zone. That's exactly what carriers have done in some cases. They'll install a small base station and antennas inside an office building and connect it to their network. Voila! Indoor cellular coverage. It's called a picocell to indicate its smaller size and coverage area.

Picocells could be the answer to all of our wireless coverage problem if they just weren't so expensive and labor intensive to install. If cellular towers could just create a miniature clone of themselves that resembled a WiFi router with a similar price and ease of installation...

Enter the femtocell. It's the Mini-Me of cell towers... sort of. Sprint is currently testing a femtocell called Airave in Indianapolis and Denver. If they like the results, there may be femtocells everywhere soon. Femtocells? Picocells? Where do they get these names?

Femto and pico are like micro and nano, only smaller. A pico something is one-thousandth of a nano. A femto is even smaller. It's a thousandth of a pico or a quadrillionth of the full deal. If you need to go even smaller, your next stops are atto, zepto and yocto. They'll probably implant yoctocells in your brain some day. Then you'll never get away from the yoc, yoc, yoctoing on the cell phone.

For now, the femtocell may come to your rescue in maintaining ubiquitous wireless communications. Sprint's Airave is more like WiFi router than you might think. It looks the part. Plus it connects to your broadband service through your existing router or Cable/DSL router.

Why the broadband connection? It's for backhaul. That's the connection to and from the phone company. The femtocell doesn't actually coordinate with the bigger cell towers. It's a stand alone device. You can't just keep talking as you walk through your front door. You have to hang-up and call back using the femtocell. Your Sprint cell phone communicates back and forth with the femtocell just like your notebook computer communicates with a WiFi router. The femtocell communicates back and forth with Sprint over your broadband service, just like you communicate with the Internet using a WiFi router.

This is more than just an analogy. Your calls go over the Internet similar to VoIP services. In a way, you have a combination of cellular and VoIP technology with all their advantages and limitations. The limitation on Internet for backhaul service is that call quality can be affected by network congestion on your broadband service and you lose service when you or your ISP loses power.

If you are going to have your calls go over the Internet, why not just skip the femtocell and use WiFi directly? That's what dual mode phones offer. T-Mobile is testing a service called HotSpot@Home that uses your wireless router instead of a femtocell. The key to this is a dual-mode cell phone that offers WiFi connections as one of the modes.

You could also use a wireless VoIP telephone handset and a service such as Skype to mimic femtocell service as a way to make inexpensive phone calls. But you'll have no coverage on the go. Once WiMAX or other wireless outdoor broadband coverage is available everywhere, wireless VoIP may give traditional cellular a run for its money. That is, unless the major cellular carriers, who now own the spectrum likely to be deployed for mobile broadband, decide to jump on this bandwagon themselves and all wireless phone services go IP instead of GSM or CDMA.

Backhaul is Backing Things Up

If you primarily use a cell phone rather than a landline and make your Internet connection using cellular broadband or WiFi hotspots, you might start thinking the whole word is wireless. It is, between you and the nearest transmitting tower or access point. But then what happens? The connection between the wired and wireless worlds is called backhaul. You may never have heard of it or thought about it, but it could soon be limiting the bandwidth of your wireless connections. Backhaul is getting all backed up.

Backed up? What is this, a plumbing problem? In a way, it is. In the electronic world where wires and fiber optic strands represent pipes, backhaul isn't much of an issue. That's especially true for business telecom services. For instance, a T1 line is symmetrical and full duplex. It's actually a four wire system. One twisted pair is designated as the upload or transmit path. The other is the download or receive path. Each pair is running at a synchronous 1.5 Mbps. The twain, as they say, never meet. You can use the transmit and receive circuits independently. For instance, radio stations use T1 lines to send program audio from studio to transmitter. The signal pair coming back from the transmitter to the studio can be off-air audio, remote pickup signals, or a satellite network feed.

You may have T1 wirelines in your business. Popular uses are for dedicated Internet access and PBX telephone service. But go out to a cell tower and somewhere with the base station equipment you'll notice a little square gray box labeled "T1". That's the T1 line that connect the cellular tower back to the telephone switching office. That's how they do it and that's the part of the circuit called "backhaul." It hauls the traffic from the cell tower to the switching office. But, of course, it also hauls the phone calls and Internet data from the switching office to the cell tower.

Now that you know how it's done, here's the problem. Cell site and T1 lines are well matched. T1 lines can transport or "trunk" multiple telephone conversations and/or internet bandwidth. With few concurrent calls to a particular tower and dial-up speed data transmissions, one T1 line might be all that is needed to serve a tower site. But engineering advancements have greatly increased cellular broadband speeds to 1 Mbps and even 3 Mbps. Suddenly, that T1 line with plenty of bandwidth margin has hit its limit. Without some additional resources, users are limited in the service levels available from the site.

One easy and popular answer is more T1's. If you can run one T1 line, there's probably enough copper in the ground or overhead to support several. T1 lines can be bonded into contiguous data pipes of 3, 4.5, 6 or more Mbps. This solution also works for WISPs or Wireless Internet Service Providers with growing subscriberships. They can start off with 1 or 2 T1 lines and add more as more users come online and revenues increase.

So, that's it? Just add more T1 lines as you need them? To a point, that's it. But what happens when wireless bandwidth needs are 30 Mbps or even 70 Mbps? This is what WiMAX requires. Seventy Mbps would take nearly 50 T1 lines if you could even find a way to bond that many together. The costs are multiplied by the number of lines, so this would also get expensive. The logical approach is to move up to DS3 service over fiber optic lines. DS3 gives you 45 Mbps and two of them is 90 Mbps. SONET fiber optic services go up to a Gbps if you ever need that much.

There's only one little rub. No fiber in the boonies. Cell sites or new WiMAX towers in metropolitan areas can be connected to existing fiber optic rings. But what about up on the hill in the middle of nowhere? There's no fiber optic cable to those sites and the cost of providing them can be a major capital expense. This is where the backup on backhaul can rear its ugly head.

Solutions? New modulation techniques make Ethernet at 10 Mbps and even Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps practical over copper pair without incurring big construction costs. Still, there are distance limits to these techniques even with repeaters. Point to point microwave transmissions may come back in vogue, especially given the transmitting height advantage of tower locations. Or it may be as simple as WiMAX backhauling WiMAX. After all, this is a wide area transmission scheme. By reserving half the bandwidth for backhaul and the other half for subscribers, a completely wireless system can be constructed.


Are you in need of serious bandwidth to support your business activities? We can help you with T1, DS3, SONET, Ethernet, and Satellite connections, with competitive pricing from a suite of 30 carriers.