Hybrid broadband service provider Nextlink Internet has increased its capacity to make denser deployments of gigabit-tier service at scale.
Nextlink is home to the largest deployment of Tarana’s G2 fixed wireless access (FWA) platform and is experiencing improved spectral efficiency, extended range, and higher data speeds, the vendor said in a press release.
G2 is operational in 350 sectors using existing tower sites. Nextlink plans to deploy the technology to more than 600 sectors by the end of next year.
The G2 is the successor to the G1. It blends licensed and 5 GHz/6 GHz unlicensed spectrum in a single radio and with full carrier aggregation.
Tarana, which provides technology to more than 300 service providers in 24 countries, offered two results from the Nextlink internet deployment.
- It claimed speeds increase from 369 Mbps download/79 Mbps upload to more than 950 Mbps download/400 Mbps upload on a 98.3-mile link. The new Nextlink capability will provide gigabit service in areas previously limited to sub-gigabit speeds.
- The company also claimed that radio frequency (RF) utilization dropped by 16% on a sector serving 186 users. This improvement in spectral efficiency — which the press release said was beyond the company’s benchmarks — extended both range and throughput.
“For us, G2 has enabled high-density deployments without the need for fiber extensions and delivers gigabit-class speeds over long distances — even in challenging non-line-of-sight and fringe conditions,” Nextlink CTO Cameron Kilton said in a press release.
Nextlink is active in 12 states and has been awarded provisional grants in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program in Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Wyoming.
Three of those states — Iowa, Louisiana, and Wyoming — were among the fifteen states whose final proposals were approved this week by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
