News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Wet Country Wireless; How British Weather Killed a Billion Pound Tech Company.

Re:Wet Country Wireless; How British Weather Killed a Billio... by mrweasel on Friday April 02, 2021 @02:41AM (#26669459)
Sonofon (now Telenor) in Denmark had a similar issue using FWA for internet service. Internet would drop out in the rain, the signal couldn’t parse over small stretches of water and leafs would get in the way in the spring and summer time.

The stupid part is that people had already been asking if water droplets would’t be an idea, and technicians working on the test equipment had noticed that it wouldn’t work in the rain.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Wet Country Wireless; How British Weather Killed a Billio... by KozmoNau7 on Friday April 02, 2021 @04:56AM (#26670023)
We were on FWA for a while, as it was the only connection type faster than ISDN available to us, before DSL was fully rolled out.

My dad was an RF technician, so he checked all the permits and allocations beforehand, and did his own survey to make sure we had a 100% uninterrupted line of sight to the mast.

It worked quite well, better than the horror stories you hear now, 1.5Mbps and we didn't have issues with rain unless it was a torrential downpour. Snowfall was the real killer, in our experience. I guess most other subscribers weren't so lucky with foliage etc.

In the end, DSL was rolled out and we jumped ship, but FWA was a neat technology, it felt very futuristic.

[ Parent | on HN ]