Have fiber optic connection It is practically essential to make normal use of the Internet. Watching 4K content in streaming, downloading files at high speed, playing online games or simply doing normal use if there are several people at home can be a problem if we do not have a speed of at least 50 or 100 Mbps contracted. However, there are areas where, even if there isn’t fiber coverage, yes you can enjoy the home connection.
Imagine that you live in an urban nucleus, and you also have a country house or a farmhouse several kilometers away of that urban nucleus. In the urban nucleus you have your fiber coverage and your connection, but in the country house only 4G coverage arrives, or you may even only have 3G coverage, which does not usually exceed 7 Mbps.
60 GHz antennas: up to 12 km range
If you don’t have fiber or 4G coverage, one of the few options you have is to use satellite Internet. The problem is that it is too expensive, where Starlink charges 499 euros for the kit, plus a monthly fee of 108 euros. Luckily you can simply share your own remote fiber network with two antennas.
In the following video from LinusTechTips we can see an example of how these antennas can completely change the way you use a house, where you can live peacefully enjoying teleworking. His parents’ house is 5 kilometers across the lake, and the connection reaches the house perfectly where they do not have any type of fixed broadband access.
The antennas they use are Ubiquity airFiber 60 GHz LR, which guarantee a speed of 1 Gbps downstream and 1 Gbps upstream at distances of up to 12 kilometers. As its name suggests, this kit has a transmitting antenna and a receiving antenna that operate in the band of 60 GHz. A WiFi signal on that frequency would have a very limited range of a few meters because it emits in all directions. These antennas, however, concentrate all that power in a single beam that is directed towards the receiver.
Figures greater than 1 Gbps at 5 km
In the video, at a distance of 5 km, a stable speed of 900 Mbps is sent with a latency of 1 ms with a Gigabit Ethernet port, and without the port they even reach speeds of 1.29 Gbps. The kit also has a backup signal with a frequency of 5 GHz, whose speed is reduced to a few hundred or tens of Mbps, but is much more stable in case of bad weather. Everything is done automatically.
The price of the airFiber AF60 LR may vary depending on where we look at it, but it can be purchased by figures around 400 euros, although there is a model with a 2 km range that costs somewhat less (about 290 euros).