If you already have line of sight I don't see a reason this couldn't be replaced with a 60ghz 802.11ad link, which should give you 4.6 gigabits.
If you have line of sight though and a fixed point to point link the range is much greater, since there's nothing in the way and an dish antenna gives you huge gain.
https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-routing-switc...
"Ideal for high-throughput connectivity with a range of up to 500 m".
For reference, that approximately two blocks in NYC.
Anyway, I looked up the Ubiquiti LiteBeam AC Gen2 since I wasn't familiar with it, and I think OP might have the wrong impression. It's a LiteBeam, not a LightBeam. The LiteBeam is just bog standard 5 GHz 802.11ac with a high gain antenna. That explains the data rates.
Given that, there seems to be no disadvantage to using the 60 GHz solution if you're close enough to the next building where it's still faster (probably close to 2 miles). It's only ~$200 more, which spread out over a building is basically nothing.
MikroTik makes some 60Ghz point to point gigabit radios that can supposedly go for 2km.
Finally, many commercial providers of E-band devices (licensed 70-80Ghz spectrum) sell gigabit capable radios that can go a couple of miles.
Any of those seem like good options for an urban building in need of better internet service.
Wireless internet makes for a very poor product to sell, because the service is unreliable, and often has problems exactly when people want it most (during inclement weather). Also, customers often have a problem dissassociating problems that should be expected with the service from problems with the service provider. It's probably not very gratifying to provide what is often the only option people have for high speed internet to have some subset of them that don't understand the reality, or are just too upset to care, disparage your name online. It also probably doesn't lead to securing additional contracts easily, and as soon as other connectivity does become available, your customers will leave at the earliest opportunity (there's not a lot of friction to signing up somewhere else when the service is currently down).
(No affiliation with NYC folks, just a WISP guy handing out the basics)
It cannot be understated how badly the more rural parts of the country are being screwed by big telecom right now.
LOL. My mom lives in an older house in a formerly-rural area where she's now surrounded by suburb-style new development. She wanted cable internet, and it cost her about $8000 and endless hours of haranguing Cox and chasing down service vans just to get a hook up. Literally she would see a Cox van at a construction site and stop and ask the person, because no one would talk to her on the phone. She eventually found one guy who gave her his business card and cell number, and knew a few people in the construction department who would help. The woman who took her credit card number over the phone to charge for the service told her she knew absolutely nothing about the process, and could make no guarantees about when it would happen. My mom was so desperate, she gave her her credit card number anyway. It took nearly a year to run maybe 100 yards of cable down her driveway from the street to her house, but she finally does have broadband now.
I’m going to guess that 80% of the US can’t get that.
The actual bandwidth used by a 300M customer and a 1000M customer is usually the same. The provider's upstream contracts would not change much if they put every one of their customers on 1000M.
But their pricing is regulated. The arm and a leg they charge for 1000M service is largely a function of that regulation, even though it hardly affects their costs otherwise. You might think that if the infrastructure costs are the same for 1M or 1000M and that the infrastructure costs are 90% of all costs, 1M and 1000M could be priced within 25% of each other. It might seem that a price jump from $100/50M to $1000/1000M is unreasonable. But the U.S. government right now is handing out $billions to rural providers to build out fiber, then requiring them to charge ridiculously high prices.
Correct. I have a gig/gig symmetrical connection and a family of four information-devouring people. In the last 30 days we used 1 TB of data... which is to say, an average of just over 3Mb/s. We probably peaked at about 600Mb/s a few times.
This is asymmetric with no disclaimer on their advertising page from an entrenched local monopoly in the north east (a small one)
It’s a weird situation. Windstream lies to the federal government and says they offer broadband to my area, when they don’t offer any service at all. The only actual provider (South Slope), which offers fiber elsewhere, is therefore shut out of the usual federal programs to finance upgrades to the completely antiquated and over-provisioned DSL lines. I’m 3 miles line of sight from their headquarters.
My parents live in the near Chicago suburbs, have 1 choice for high speed Internet, and pay $80/month for 100Mbps down and 6Mbps up.
So, rural internet options are actually better than urban in some areas.
NYC Mesh puts a fiber connected node with a laser receiver on a tall building. You install a laser receiver on top of your building. Anyone with line of sight to the node now has fast, affordable internet access. They don't have to deal with mega telecoms anymore.
[0] https://www.nycmesh.net/