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Rural locations have long presented a major challenge for rolling out superfast broadband, but a wireless radio-based system from Airband aims to change that by bringing higher-speed connectivity to hard-to-reach areas.
As many as 6,000 homes and businesses across remote parts of the West Country in the UK could soon gain access to speeds that urban residents take for granted. The solution uses wireless radio links mounted on transmitter pylons or masts to deliver the final connection to properties.
Although the last hop to the building is wireless, the network itself is fed by a fibre or ADSL backhaul, similar to how a traditional broadband provider connects to the wider internet.
The Connecting Devon and Somerset programme has confirmed that Airband’s technology will be used for the next phase of its broadband rollout across Exmoor and Dartmoor National Parks. The programme aims to provide superfast broadband to roughly 90% of homes and businesses across Devon and Somerset by the end of 2016.
Exmoor and Dartmoor present significant obstacles to conventional wired infrastructure because of their rugged terrain, hills and dense tree cover. Airband’s radio-based system is designed specifically to address these conditions by transmitting a signal from radios on masts directly to radios attached to end properties, bypassing the need for continuous buried cabling.
This approach delivers several practical benefits: faster deployment, lower installation costs and less disruption compared with trenching roads to lay fibre or copper cables to exchange points. Those advantages make wireless radio links a strong complement to fibre and ADSL backhaul in sparsely populated and geographically challenging areas.
Airband has prior experience delivering superfast broadband in rural locations, and the company says lessons learned from projects in upland Wales and other remote regions have helped refine the technology and deployment practices.
By combining resilient radio links with established fibre or ADSL network access, this hybrid model can extend broadband coverage into places where traditional wired rollouts are impractical or prohibitively expensive, helping close the digital divide between urban and rural communities.
Do you think Airband’s approach can unlock superfast broadband for rural areas? Share your thoughts in the comments.