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This doesn’t compare to the most common approach to long haul wireless in rural areas.

There are many competitors that use an omnidirectional tower and directional antennas at customer sites.

A recent competitor in this space regularly achieves 6 miles at >100Mbps (~16mbps uplink):

https://www.telecompetitor.com/wisps-get-cbrs-range-as-great...

FB is claiming 6Mbps down (1.2 up) at 12 miles for their approach, which doesn’t seem to rely on fixed location customer antennas.




The antenna FB is describing provides cellphone coverage. Wireless providers just provide Internet/network capacity (since they rely on a customer's fixed antenna). Both those things are needed in rural areas.

Both these solutions require that you be in line-of-sight to the tower. You are more likely to be in line-of-sight to 250 meter tower.

So, you're right, not comparable but still.




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