Internet service providers (ISP's) are looking for ways to expand
gigabit per second (Gbit/s) high-speed services to their customers. These can be achieved through
fiber to the premises broadband network architecture, or a more affordable alternative using
fixed wireless in the
last mile in combination with the fiber networks in the
middle mile in order to reduce the costs of trenching fiber optic cables to the users. In the United States, 60 GHz
V band is unlicensed. This makes the V band an appealing choice to be used as fixed wireless access for Gbit/s services to connect to homes and businesses. Similarly, 70/80 GHz
E band is lightly licensed which can be more accessible to more providers to provide such services. There had been some early adopters of the hybrid fiber-wireless approach to provide Gbit/s services to customers. One of those ISP's was Webpass, a company founded in 2003 in
San Francisco as a wireless ISP focusing on buildings in big cities. Since then, Webpass had been increasing the speeds along with improved wireless technologies. By 2015, Webpass offered 1 Gbit/s connections to commercial customers, however, the residential customers were limited to speeds of up to 500 Mbit/s to share the 1 Gbit/s wireless link among many residents in the same building. The company utilized a combination of various licensed and unlicensed bands. In January 2016, a startup company Starry from
Boston introduced Starry Point with the goal to provide Gbit/s speed internet wirelessly to homes. The device is a
fixed wireless unit attached to a window as an access point to connect to Starry core networks using a
millimetre wave band communication. The company did not reveal the details of the band, but claimed to be "the world’s first millimeter wave band
active phased array technology for consumer internet communications". However, in January 2018, at the time that the company announced the expansion of its
beta service to cover 3 cities: Boston,
Los Angeles, and
Washington, DC, the speeds were still limited to up to 200 Mbit/s. In June 2016,
Google Fiber acquired Webpass to boost its effort in its experiments with wireless technologies. As a result, Google Fiber put its effort on fiber to the premises on hold to explore more on the cheaper wireless alternative. By early 2017, the Webpass division of Google Fiber expanded 1 Gbit/s wireless service to customers in many cities in the United States. In November 2016, Atlas Networks, an ISP that serves
Seattle, deployed its V-band Gbit/s service to customers within the to its fiber networks. The maximum throughput for each connection was 1 gigabit per second. In October 2017, Cloudwifi, a startup ISP based in
Kitchener, Ontario started using 60 GHz band fixed wireless to provide Gbit/s connectivity to customers within the range of its fiber connection points. In October 2017, Newark Fiber enabled its first customer in
Newark, New Jersey with 10 Gbit/s fixed wireless service. Newark Fiber used V-band 10 Gbit/s transmitters with the distance of up to . ==References==