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Mobile & Wireless
SkyPilot Expands Broadband Wireless Play
Vendor Unveils WiMAX, WiFi Wares
by Jim Barthold
SkyPilot Networks is expanding its broadband wireless
offerings with new products in both the Wi-Fi and WiMAX
spaces. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based vendor said it will use
Fujitsu’s WiMAX system-on-a-chip to build a WiMAX mesh
networking solution. Additionally, SkyPilot is providing wireless
technology to MetroFi to build turnkey metro Wi-Fi networks
based using 4.9 GHz spectrum.
Mesh is not generally used by WiMAX because the evolving
broadband wireless technology delivers a broader signal over
a wider area than its cousin Wi-Fi, which frequently uses mesh
to boost signal quality and expand serving areas.
“The whole idea of having WiMAX is to have high throughput
and long range, but that necessitates high power which you’re
not going to have in a phone or laptop because you’ll drain
them really quickly,” said Brian Jenkins, vice president of
product management at SkyPilot.
SkyPilot, he said, uses “pico” cells and sectorized antennas to
increase throughput over shorter distances and therefore
conserve energy while continuing to deliver powerful,
bandwidth-rich signals.
“Mesh has gotten a bad name because a lot of people do a
cheap version of it; they throw omnidirectional antennas out
there that allow you to have an ad hoc way of connecting
devices but the performance is really lousy,” Jenkins
said. “We have this nice way of having these antenna centers
so each sector is a 45-degree beam. We have eight of those
on a product so it still has the look and feel of an
omnidirectional system and provides 360-degree coverage
but does so in a narrow beam.”
Monica Paolin, president of Senza Fili Consulting, said mesh
would help wireless providers reduce backhaul expenses by
cutting down the number of base stations needed to send
signals back to points of presence on the network backbone.
“What I really liked was the fact that their mesh is a point-to-
point mesh. I see it as a point-to-point backhaul,” she said.
Instead of backhauling from every base station in the
network, she said, “you would have one or two base stations
that would connect to the fiber (backbone) and the other ones
are connected to those base stations wirelessly.”
In the other announcement, SkyPilot said MetroFi, which
partners with municipalities and ISPs to deliver high-speed
broadband service will use SkyPilot’s 4.9 GHz Wi-Fi-based
technology to deliver “all-in” pricing of $50,000 per square
mile. The 4.9 GHz spectrum is being made available via
cheap government leases for municipalities to develop
wireless first responder networks. Having spectrum, however,
is only a part of the cost of these networks; building out the
infrastructure is the greater part.
“MetroFi is offering a turnkey solution,” said Jenkins. “They’ll
come in with a price point that makes it very economical and
addresses return on investment for municipal networks.”
The $50,000 price point is half the standard $100,000 per
square mile that has been in place, Jenkins said.
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