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Wet Country Wireless; How British Weather Killed a Billion Pound Tech Company

101 points by tweetle_beetle 6y ago

vzaliva 6y ago
Warning: long-winded story with catchy title which is misleading. The only reference to weather is that the service was "dropping out during wet weather." No further explanation is provided. They also cite another problem due to "tree foliage", but this has nothing to do with weather.
- h0l0gr4ph1c 6y ago
  both contain water.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    "contains water" wouldn't normally be enough to suggest something is weather, but this is Britain so it's actually a reasonable comment.
- walrus01 6y ago
  PtMP 3.5 or 3.65 services should never be implemented with non line of sight, or through trees. In a typical TDD airtime system, no matter what it is, one client out of twenty on an AP radio with poor signal (let's say, -77 on both chains) will consume more air time and drag down the performance of the entire AP. There's a reason why all the deployment guides for modern WISP PTMP radios are quite insistent on true clear fresnel zone between CPE radio and AP. But if I had a dollar for every shoddy 802.16d-2004 or 802.16e based WISP trying to shoot through thick foliage or even install CPEs inside peoples' windows....
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    I think the other issue is that demand increases the most when it’s raining, just when supply is the lowest, further crushing any weak systems.
tapland 6y ago
In Sweden that sector died as the fiber network was extended. It did fill a niche that shrank as fiber was laid down.
- eertami 6y ago
  Understandable but looking at current progress, I seriously doubt the UK will have significant fiber roll-out within this century.
walrus01 6y ago
From a last mile 3.5, 3.65 and 5.x GHz band WISP perspective, wet weather isn't what killed that, but overall better radios from the competition, for PtMP access to AP radios: ubiquiti (rocket M5 and 5ac, and associated family of radios) cambium pm450 and cambium's 802.11n and ac based radios mikrotik radios various telrad, radwin and other vendors' 802.16e based stuff (now obsolete, but wasn't quite so in 2015) those ionica things are so weird, rare, were manufactured in very low volumes and cost way too much. these devices are from a much earlier era, around the same time as the cambium (motorola) FSK100 series PMP radios. they never achieved any significant market penetration in the global low-budget WISP equipment market.
Zenst 6y ago
Was expecting to read about Rabbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_(telecommunications) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_(telecommunications) which was another failed wireless communication venture and think DECT roaming for a quick grasp of what they offered. Can't say I had heard of the company in the article, though living inside the M25, you are kind of bubbled from internet offering choice limitations.
- mprev 6y ago
  Ah, Rabbit was amazing. A “mobile” you could use within a few feet of specific locations. As for Ionica, it wasn’t that long ago that you would still see the dishes on roofs and chimneys in the Midlands. Its downfall, though, was less to do with rain and more that it was narrowband, so good only for voice and maybe dialup modem, at a time when cable networks were not far off launching DOCSIS broadband.
- DoubleGlazing 6y ago
  I know someone who still uses the Rabbit handset as their home phone. There was also Dolphin Telecom, the network based on Tetra technology and was only in service for 2-3 years.
joosters 6y ago
I used to work in that Ionica building (after Ionica left). Like Ionica, the building design was cutting edge but didn’t live up to expectations! The ‘smart’ building used computer controlled cooling towers, vents and a giant block of concrete (as a ‘thermal battery’) to manage the heating and cooling, in place of regular air conditioning. The building ran on an ancient OS/2 desktop computer - I wonder if it is still functioning? But the system didn’t work very well at all - in winter, it was freezing cold, and in summer it got too hot. Ironically, you could open the windows by your desk to get a cooling fresh breeze of air, but then the building manager would come around and complain that you had to shut the windows, they were disrupting the ‘smart ventilation’ airflow!
- foepys 6y ago
  My office has a similar system but in a very simple version. It's just for cooling and constantly pulling air out of the basement into the offices. For a few weeks in the beginning of summer it's working fine but after the basement heats up, it's just shuffling hot air around until the building manager remembers to shut it down. The old building manager was quite good at turning it on at night and off by day to cool the building in summer nights. I remember reading somewhere that this system had been built again in Germany by a larger corporation that issued a PR statement about that but I cannot find it anywhere.
  - ranieuwe 6y ago
    I worked in Munich, Germany in a building that had this. It was built some time around 2010. Same experience as you had. It didn’t really work all that well. Spring early summer was good. Peak summer was a disaster.
- hellbannedguy 6y ago
  Opening the window would make me happy, even once in awhile. I understand it’s not feasible in most buildings. (The thought of going back to closed up modern building is sickening lately. I know it’s coming for myself though.)
  - 6y ago
mrweasel 6y ago
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.
- KozmoNau7 6y ago
  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.
logifail 6y ago
I lived in Cambridge, UK in the 1990s and after moving house in the second half of 1996 we had Ionica service installed. I moved out of that property a year later, wonder what happened to the hardware...
timthorn 6y ago
This was one of my very first shareholdings. I worked for Nortel who made the kit, and I remember an excited presentation in the staff canteen where the upcoming ISDN capabilities of the system were described. I learned from that experience...
gnfargbl 6y ago
If rain attenuation was a significant issue for Ionica, then won't it be a significant issue for the UK's 5G roll-out? Both system appear to run at about 3.5GHz.
- DoubleGlazing 6y ago
  5G is designed to drop down frequencies in situations like that. The frequency range that 5G can use is huge, but speeds won't be as fast lower down the spectrum.
marshmallow_12 6y ago
I wonder what he meant by "lingering signs of bt monopoly". Only they and i think Virgin actually supply lines. And the price for a landline is absurd. Like completely out of touch with reality. We have to pay extra for basics like caller id and even to call uk mobile phone numbers! Which is totally ridiculous. Landlines have a quarter of the utility and cost 7 times more (easily) then a call/text only mobile plan.
MomoXenosaga 6y ago
My country switched to cable in the 1980s. Its always fascinating to me seeing old pictures where every house has an antenna! Wireless technology can be rolled out quickly while fibreglass networks are a massive and costly undertaking. Neatly putting all infrastructure into the ground is certainly more aesthetically pleasing IMO.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  The UK did have a cabled system at the time - this is about moving from cables to wireless, for better bandwidth and lower infrastructure costs. (Obviously it didn't work out.)
magicsmoke 6y ago
That patch antenna array looks both beautiful and a pain in the ass to design and simulate.
- ansible 6y ago
  > That patch antenna array looks both beautiful and a pain in the ass to design and simulate. These days, it isn't too hard. You can usually just import your antenna design CAD file into the simulation tool, and go from there. Set the material properties, thickness of the PCB and its composition, and such.

Warning: long-winded story with catchy title which is misleading. The only reference to weather is that the service was "dropping out during wet weather." No further explanation is provided. They also cite another problem due to "tree foliage", but this has nothing to do with weather.

h0l0gr4ph1c 6y ago
both contain water.
- onion2k 6y ago
  "contains water" wouldn't normally be enough to suggest something is weather, but this is Britain so it's actually a reasonable comment.
walrus01 6y ago
PtMP 3.5 or 3.65 services should never be implemented with non line of sight, or through trees. In a typical TDD airtime system, no matter what it is, one client out of twenty on an AP radio with poor signal (let's say, -77 on both chains) will consume more air time and drag down the performance of the entire AP. There's a reason why all the deployment guides for modern WISP PTMP radios are quite insistent on true clear fresnel zone between CPE radio and AP. But if I had a dollar for every shoddy 802.16d-2004 or 802.16e based WISP trying to shoot through thick foliage or even install CPEs inside peoples' windows....
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  I think the other issue is that demand increases the most when it’s raining, just when supply is the lowest, further crushing any weak systems.

tapland 6y ago

In Sweden that sector died as the fiber network was extended. It did fill a niche that shrank as fiber was laid down.

eertami 6y ago
Understandable but looking at current progress, I seriously doubt the UK will have significant fiber roll-out within this century.

walrus01 6y ago

From a last mile 3.5, 3.65 and 5.x GHz band WISP perspective, wet weather isn't what killed that, but overall better radios from the competition, for PtMP access to AP radios: ubiquiti (rocket M5 and 5ac, and associated family of radios) cambium pm450 and cambium's 802.11n and ac based radios mikrotik radios various telrad, radwin and other vendors' 802.16e based stuff (now obsolete, but wasn't quite so in 2015) those ionica things are so weird, rare, were manufactured in very low volumes and cost way too much. these devices are from a much earlier era, around the same time as the cambium (motorola) FSK100 series PMP radios. they never achieved any significant market penetration in the global low-budget WISP equipment market.

Zenst 6y ago

Was expecting to read about Rabbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_(telecommunications) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_(telecommunications) which was another failed wireless communication venture and think DECT roaming for a quick grasp of what they offered. Can't say I had heard of the company in the article, though living inside the M25, you are kind of bubbled from internet offering choice limitations.

mprev 6y ago
Ah, Rabbit was amazing. A “mobile” you could use within a few feet of specific locations. As for Ionica, it wasn’t that long ago that you would still see the dishes on roofs and chimneys in the Midlands. Its downfall, though, was less to do with rain and more that it was narrowband, so good only for voice and maybe dialup modem, at a time when cable networks were not far off launching DOCSIS broadband.
DoubleGlazing 6y ago
I know someone who still uses the Rabbit handset as their home phone. There was also Dolphin Telecom, the network based on Tetra technology and was only in service for 2-3 years.

joosters 6y ago

I used to work in that Ionica building (after Ionica left). Like Ionica, the building design was cutting edge but didn’t live up to expectations! The ‘smart’ building used computer controlled cooling towers, vents and a giant block of concrete (as a ‘thermal battery’) to manage the heating and cooling, in place of regular air conditioning. The building ran on an ancient OS/2 desktop computer - I wonder if it is still functioning? But the system didn’t work very well at all - in winter, it was freezing cold, and in summer it got too hot. Ironically, you could open the windows by your desk to get a cooling fresh breeze of air, but then the building manager would come around and complain that you had to shut the windows, they were disrupting the ‘smart ventilation’ airflow!

foepys 6y ago
My office has a similar system but in a very simple version. It's just for cooling and constantly pulling air out of the basement into the offices. For a few weeks in the beginning of summer it's working fine but after the basement heats up, it's just shuffling hot air around until the building manager remembers to shut it down. The old building manager was quite good at turning it on at night and off by day to cool the building in summer nights. I remember reading somewhere that this system had been built again in Germany by a larger corporation that issued a PR statement about that but I cannot find it anywhere.
- ranieuwe 6y ago
  I worked in Munich, Germany in a building that had this. It was built some time around 2010. Same experience as you had. It didn’t really work all that well. Spring early summer was good. Peak summer was a disaster.
hellbannedguy 6y ago
Opening the window would make me happy, even once in awhile. I understand it’s not feasible in most buildings. (The thought of going back to closed up modern building is sickening lately. I know it’s coming for myself though.)
- 6y ago

mrweasel 6y ago

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.

KozmoNau7 6y ago
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.

logifail 6y ago

I lived in Cambridge, UK in the 1990s and after moving house in the second half of 1996 we had Ionica service installed. I moved out of that property a year later, wonder what happened to the hardware...

timthorn 6y ago

This was one of my very first shareholdings. I worked for Nortel who made the kit, and I remember an excited presentation in the staff canteen where the upcoming ISDN capabilities of the system were described. I learned from that experience...

gnfargbl 6y ago

If rain attenuation was a significant issue for Ionica, then won't it be a significant issue for the UK's 5G roll-out? Both system appear to run at about 3.5GHz.

DoubleGlazing 6y ago
5G is designed to drop down frequencies in situations like that. The frequency range that 5G can use is huge, but speeds won't be as fast lower down the spectrum.

marshmallow_12 6y ago

I wonder what he meant by "lingering signs of bt monopoly". Only they and i think Virgin actually supply lines. And the price for a landline is absurd. Like completely out of touch with reality. We have to pay extra for basics like caller id and even to call uk mobile phone numbers! Which is totally ridiculous. Landlines have a quarter of the utility and cost 7 times more (easily) then a call/text only mobile plan.

MomoXenosaga 6y ago

My country switched to cable in the 1980s. Its always fascinating to me seeing old pictures where every house has an antenna! Wireless technology can be rolled out quickly while fibreglass networks are a massive and costly undertaking. Neatly putting all infrastructure into the ground is certainly more aesthetically pleasing IMO.

chrisseaton 6y ago
The UK did have a cabled system at the time - this is about moving from cables to wireless, for better bandwidth and lower infrastructure costs. (Obviously it didn't work out.)

magicsmoke 6y ago

That patch antenna array looks both beautiful and a pain in the ass to design and simulate.

ansible 6y ago
> That patch antenna array looks both beautiful and a pain in the ass to design and simulate. These days, it isn't too hard. You can usually just import your antenna design CAD file into the simulation tool, and go from there. Set the material properties, thickness of the PCB and its composition, and such.