CSIRO Develops 10 Gbps Microwave Backhaul 121
theweatherelectric writes "James Hutchinson of iTnews writes, 'CSIRO has begun talks with global manufacturers to commercialise microwave technology it says can provide at least 10 Gbps symmetric backhaul services to mobile towers. The project, funded out of the Science and Industry Endowment Fund and a year in planning, could provide a ten-fold increase in the speed of point-to-point microwave transmission systems within two years, according to project manager, Dr Jay Guo. Microwave transmission is used to link mobile towers back to a carrier's network where it is physically difficult or economically unviable to run fibre to the tower. Where current technology has an upper limit of a gigabit per second to multiple towers over backhaul, the government organisation said it could provide the 10 Gbps symmetric speeds over ranges of up to 50 kilometres.'"
Good work by the Australians (Score:5, Interesting)
Now they can implement this into the NBN and allow those that can only have wireless access and not cable have this.Actually at this speed it could exceed the cable part of the NBN.
Precipitation (Score:4, Interesting)
Microwave transmission is/can be blocked/degraded by precipitation which is not a good thing. If this is a problem with this technology it will likely be implemented in only the most extreme locations -- where laying cable is very very expensive and utilization will be light.
CSIRO are now trolls. (Score:3, Interesting)
No. CSIRO are trolls.
I've been meeting them for quite some years now and the CSIRO guys I've met are about protectionism. Since they lost their .edu status, they are about turning a buck. They will lie, cheat and steal their way through any bit of technology and pawn it off as their own. They may once have had skill but those days have gone.
The CSIRO are pretending to be elite. They plant themselves into the University system and pinch any idea that has the smallest amount of creativity. They will take established conferences and hijack them as their own. I bet you they had meetings about the recent attention of the WIFI thing and thought about how they can try and keep the momentum going. You wouldn't believe the extent they will advertise because they know that this is how you attract research and development money in Australia. Glossy mags and smiling pictures with MPs and popular projects as backdrops are taking research dollars from .edu and into putting it into .com. I wouldn't mind so much except they never deliver on more than 90% of projects. Just Word documents.
Sure, there may be a couple of greybeards that still create, but none of the new guys do. But when the chief scientist, ceo type, publicly states that the future of energy is fossil fuels and not renewable energies, something is very, very wrong. That was until it was popular to be green.