
Aereo Founder Is Back with New High-Speed Wireless Service - e15ctr0n
http://www.wsj.com/articles/aereo-founder-is-back-with-new-high-speed-wireless-service-1453934995
======
jwuphysics
I can't get through the payway, but based on The Verge
([http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/27/10841600/starry-
wireless-g...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/27/10841600/starry-wireless-
gigabit-internet-project-from-aereo-founder)) story and comments that I've
seen here, I think I'm going to have to be pessimistic on this one. As a
millimeter to radio wavelength astronomer, I wish them luck transmitting
signals through any sort of inclement weather or in locations of high
humidity.

------
ricardobeat
We've had radio equipment for last-mile connections for a while, it's used
everywhere. Doing it at 1gbps (vs the current 100/300/450mbps) won't reduce
the hurdles of needing line of sight, weather and obstacle sensitivity,
degradation due to exposure, antenna positioning and leasing space, plus all
the required maintenance.

If this company is going for a tech solution, why not push for 5G which solves
everything at once?

~~~
ascagnel_
Because they don't have the licensed spectrum they'd need. My understanding is
the tech they've chosen runs on unlicensed spectrum, trading political
problems for technical problems.

------
deftnerd
The news is light on the tech side of things, but I wonder if their experience
building their Aereo antenna infrastructure might have a place in this.

From the video, it appears that their goal is to have a few transmission
towers in a region and then neighborhood or block-level repeaters that receive
the signal and rebroadcast it.

So, fixed millimeter microwave wireless from the repeaters to the main
gateway, but what will they use from the repeater to the customer?

Some WISP's are starting to roll out 4G hotspots over unlicensed frequencies.
That would work in this situation and their experience with micro-antennas
could let them cram several antennas into their router to connect to as many
of the relays as possible to increase bandwidth and resilience.

~~~
AjithAntony
> experience building their Aereo antenna infrastructure

I thought the extent of their antenna technology was just a board with a bunch
of token antenna element that gave the illusion that each subscriber was using
a dedicated antenna.

~~~
acjohnson55
Any source for that?

It's not like it's crazy hard to make a small digital antenna, so I'm not sure
why it would be in doubt that they did so.

~~~
snowwrestler
The question is whether building the Aereo antenna arrays developed some
special understanding of antennae that would confer competitive advantage on a
wireless ISP.

Wireless ISPs have been tried for 15 years, but the only place they've been
successful is where there is no real alternative. Weather, humidity, and trees
make it extremely difficult to compete with the bandwidth and reliability of
wired Internet.

Personally, I'm dubious that the Aereo antenna technologies apply to this new
venture. The Aereo arrays tuned in relatively low-frequency signals from
optimum locations. A wireless consumer ISP using unlicensed spectrum will be
the opposite: listening for high frequencies in bad locations.

------
ceocoder
Non paywalled google referer version -
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiO9ISQqsvKAhXEtIMKHUQsA_gQqQIIHjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Faereo-
founder-is-back-with-new-high-speed-wireless-
service-1453934995&usg=AFQjCNGleGpRyMM7ABGXdhZ4NHjIvXgrvQ)

~~~
wernercd
Likewise... F U WSJ. Your articles aren't are THAT special.

~~~
mintplant
It's this or ads, and everyone's blocking the latter.

~~~
wernercd
Or it's getting roughly the same stories elsewhere:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Aero+founder&gws_rd=ssl#tbm=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Aero+founder&gws_rd=ssl#tbm=nws)

Tons of copy cat stores without the paywall.

Ads are a security risk, obtrusive, annoying, data hog, etc, etc, etc... There
is a reason more and more and MORE people are demanding ad blocking.

People have had online news without borders for too long for this garbage to
work.

------
crapolasplatter
Just the thought of Comcast having competition at high speeds brings a smile
to my face.

I so look forward to the day that I can tell comcast to F-off for good.

Comcast better get off there gravy train throne and stop pissing off their
customers with there bandwidth rape you rates since they don't like the term
data-cap.

Google Fiber , and wirelss tech as this company are coming for you.

On the other side Amazon prime and netflix are coming after your content
provider business as they are creating there own.

------
sathackr
I see some major issues here.

1\. Weather - The higher the frequency, the more things like
rain/fog/sleet/snow start to affect you. For example, 24ghz in Florida is
useless for more than about 1 mile, unless you're okay with it going out in
the rain. In Arizona, it's great for up to 5 miles. 39ghz will be more limited
than this.

2\. Spectrum - The most efficient radios I know of achieve about 10bps/hz --
that means you need 100mhz of spectrum for 1gb/s. That's total speed, a
900x100 or a 500x500 connection. I don't know the details of what technology
is being used or planned here but it's going to be at least half of that for a
practical multi-point system, even worse since these will be user-installed
where someone will settle on a weak signal that burns more spectrum for the
same speed. My guess is around 2bps/hz, but I'll stick with 5 for now, giving
the benefit of the doubt. Assuming the entire 39ghz(39000mhz to 39999mhz) band
is available for use, at a likely best-case scenario of 5bps/hz that's about
5gb/s of traffic for any given signal area. If you're selling 1gb connections,
even at a 50 to 1 oversubscription rate, that's only 250 connections. That
will barely put a dent in an urban environment with 100,000+ people.

3\. Spectrum re-use. Cell companies are able to re-use the spectrum they have
because they can control with a good degree of accuracy where their signal
goes. At 39ghz, this signal is going to reflect off anything and everything,
making spectrum planning very difficult. You might need two access points on
either side of a large building for coverage, but thanks to reflections, you
won't be able to re-use any of that spectrum because the signal will be
bouncing all over. You have very little control over where your signal goes in
an urban environment. A truck driving down the road may send your signal 2
miles in the direction you don't want it to go.

4\. Bandwidth -- How many rooftops have 10+gb/s of internet available?
Probably not many unless you happen to get lucky and have a carrier hotel in
the same place you need signal.

I'm a feet-on-the-ground(or sometimes tower) guy, so these are napkin numbers.
I've seen a couple of real wireless engineers around here, maybe one of them
can pitch in with some more concrete numbers.

When Aereo first started, it was a sound idea with very little in the way on
the technical side for implementation. As we know, Aereo's problems weren't
technical. This project has many apparent technical issues, and probably some
legal ones as well.

I don't want to unnecessarily poo-poo his project. If it works I will be glad
-- it will be another tool I can use to do my job -- but it seems like he's
promising rainbows and unicorns right now, like so many other investor-bait
news articles I read.

Source: 20 years of experience working on/for/by/with many wireless internet
providers and cell tower companies.

~~~
acjohnson55
As far as the spectrum reuse question, they talk about active phased array
tech, would that possibly allow them to get a lot more reuse, assuming they
can somehow deal with reflections (with CDMA, or signal processing that
integrates multipath signals, or something)?

For weather, what if the base stations only need to work over some distance
less than a mile?

For bandwidth, if you consider this to be essentially a last mile tech, and
furthermore, if the base stations can mesh network to reach backbone, might
that solve the issue?

Just some thoughts. I'm a total non expert.

~~~
sathackr
I believe they are referring to a beam-forming antenna when they say active
phased array. Basically, timing of the RF signal to various portions of the
antenna is altered such that it restricts and focuses the beam towards an
intended target. The technology has only recently come to the point that it is
practical for consumer level applications. I don't see it helping with
reflections, with endpoints all over, you'll have a bunch of very strong beams
scattering everywhere, but it can help push the signal further than a simple
omni-directional or even sector antenna. I don't believe it helps much with
the received signal.

A real engineer will be able to answer the signal processing question much
better than I, but to my knowledge, multipath can only be effectively dealt
with when all versions of the signal originated from the same device. When you
have effectively a stray signal, it's difficult to tell even where the carrier
is. There is some mitigation possible with timing of transmit/receive
signals(usually with GPS), but this also requires some control over the
propagation of the signal.

As far as weather, for most areas, 39ghz would probably be practical out to 2
miles, with some brief interruptions for very heavy rain. But with the
bandwidth limitations, this isn't in line with the stated goal of gigabit
level service to high-density urban environments.

This would certainly be a last-mile tech, but the described target is high-
density urban areas, where population densities far exceed 1000/sq mile. I
can't see this technology ever being able to function at gigabit speeds with
those densities.

Mesh networking has it's own issues. If you're going to run it on the same
frequency as your endpoints, then you are sharing spectrum with them and your
overall bandwidth is significantly reduced. You can backhaul it on a different
frequency, but now you have more equipment and expense, licensing, etc... I
have to be careful saying it because I haven't kept up with the lastest in
mesh developments, but over the last 10 years, I have never seen a mesh
network system work reliably with any sort of appreciable speed. Most have
failed miserably. The idea looks great on paper, but rarely works out in the
real world.

There are tons of last-mile tech available that work very well. FSO(free space
optics)[1] is one of them. It has nearly unlimited bandwidth. It's limitation
is, it is, as the name implies, optical in nature, so line of sight is an
absolute must. Currently available equipment is overpriced as well, but a
newcomer could change that.

The FCC just opened up about 150mhz of spectrum in the 3.5ghz area also for
last-mile delivery of wireless broadband - Citizens Broadband Radio Service[2]
This band is aimed at rural deployments, and isn't concerned with pushing 1gb
to everyone, but will go a long ways towards getting a lot of people on the
internet at decent(20mb/s+) speeds.

The 5ghz unlicensed band is also very effective at distances under 2 miles,
and can be pushed up to 100 miles in certain situations. There is about 600mhz
of spectrum available here, some of it ideal for urban situations as it shares
frequencies with weather radar and is under strict power restrictions that
make it difficult to use for longer and rural connections.

On a tangent, I deal with people nearly every day that can't even get 3mb/s
DSL service. The only high-speed that's available to them is satellite, with
data caps and horrendous latency, or 3g/4g with spotty speeds and
availability, data caps, and impractical per GB billing. When they are able to
get even 10mb/s of real internet, they are happier than a 5 year old on
Christmas morning. It's by far the most rewarding thing I get to do. It would
be nice to see more money flowing towards things like this. But not like FRBA
[3] -- Essentially $24 million wasted.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-
space_optical_communicati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-
space_optical_communication)

[2]
[https://www.fcc.gov/rulemaking/12-354](https://www.fcc.gov/rulemaking/12-354)

[3] [http://blog.tmcnet.com/on-rads-radar/2013/04/florida-
broadba...](http://blog.tmcnet.com/on-rads-radar/2013/04/florida-broadband-
litigation-woes.html)

edit: fix footnotes

~~~
acjohnson55
Thanks for the information. I've also got some healthy skepticism that they've
really figured out this last mile problem. But even if it ends up being an
option with drawbacks, hopefully the competition turns the current monopoly
market on its head.

------
pilom
This sounds so much like WiMax and that didn't succeed. Why would I believe
this will?

~~~
tw04
Because Wimax tried to take on the cellphone industry without actually getting
any of them onboard besides sprint.

If they had focused on broadband to the home instead they may have had a
different fate. This also sounds much, much faster.

~~~
joezydeco
Clearwire (aka Clear) tried focusing on home ISP service. They folded last
year.

I was a user for about two years and, personally, the bandwidth just wasn't
enough.

~~~
kyllo
Clear was just fine for web browsing but way too slow for streaming video.
That was what did it in.

~~~
joezydeco
I thought LTE did it in.

------
trhway
millimeter waves? the skin-burning police crowd control device is 95GHz, ie.
3.2mm wavelength.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System#Effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System#Effects)

