Seven billion dollars tends to grab the attention of a lot of people. We were reminded of that earlier this week while attending the Broadband Initiative Kick-Off meeting for the rural broadband stimulus program – let’s just say it drew a crowd. Now comes all of the solutions that are going to ‘fix’ the rural broadband problem, and by the way, position themselves to get a piece of the $7 billion pie. The latest is a WiMAX-Satellite hybrid system using WiMAX for broadband access and satellite broadband for backhaul. AlphaStar International, Inc. and Computers & Tele-Comm, Inc. (CTC) have announced a joint venture which pairs the two broadband technologies. It’s an interesting pair, considering neither has been seen as a bastion of broadband success – at least not yet.
“The Digital Divide just got smaller. Today with this announcement, rural areas with no access to broadband fiber finally have a solution to getting connected at 4G speeds,” says CTC President Graeme Gibson in a joint press release. Their press release mentions 4G several times and even suggests the system could support video and audio streaming. We’re a little skeptical, given the limitations of satellite backhaul, but would love to be convinced otherwise. Acknowledging satellite’s limitation for broadband, including its latency issues, this hybrid model apparently leverages caching as much as possible. Alphastar and CTC are targeting rural broadband providers and metro Wi-Fi operators with the solution. No word on any functioning systems or actual paying subscribers using this solution.
What do you think? Will this work? Share your view by using the comments tool below.
I am a current customer using CTC’s system in Kansas City. Speeds are great and for video Sling works well. I don’t know much about the Satellite part of it, but since I am in IT I did read the rural reference model that was sent along with the press release. The ideas in it seem to make sense to me. CTC is part of a bigger group called Aircore, and that gives me roaming privileges over a pretty good area of MO and KS. I hope I will be able to roam at Satellite connected sites as well. As to the cache one of the things I noticed in their information was that they also provision at least one T-1 at each site (where possible) for phones and command and control. That seems to be a good idea.
interested to see what the cost of that satellite backhaul is. if its going to support true broadband – i have to believe its real pricey.
Satellite is not the answer for rural broadband. Fixed wireless can cover the entire US rural areas for $7 billion.
Is it just me or the satellite tv just got a little bit more competitive because of this?
I never thought the WIMAX–Satellite will cover so much programs