Soon to launch wireless services to all areas of Northland

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NorthlandConnect

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#23028 16-Jun-2008 00:35

Hi There,

Let me introduce myself, I am Matthew Greaves of Northland Connect Limited, I have noticed to see some comments of Northland Connect popping up so I have decided to sign up to answer any questions that might arise.

There have been some rumors saying that we have closed down, this is not true, stage one of our company was to learn and design a future proof network designed by northland not someone in a city office, in about 2 - 3 Months we are about to launch our next generation service that will be covering the locations below, we are in the process with Kordia, organizing our cell sites and main internet backbone whne these proposals are complete and the network has been rolled out (2 Weeks) and tested 1 Month we will release our services

Locations where coverage will be available

Te Koa, Kiatia, Mangonui, Kaeo, Kerikeri, Paihia, Russell, Bay of Islands, Kawakawa, Ahipara, Waihou Valley, Okaihau, Hikurangi, Whanagrei, North River District.

Prices start for $20.00 Month 5Mbps Up down with 1Gb of Data to the more Advanced $60.00 12Mbps Up Down with 30Gb of Data

With the new gear that we will be installing, Northland Connect will be offering Ultra Speed Internet up to 20+ Mbps Up and Down
with a network Backhaul of 60+ Mbps Full Duplex, Each Main link has a redundant link in case of network failure. The entire network is Fully QOS and extreamly low latency 5-15ms

The Services that we will be offering are Ultra Speed Internet, Voice over IP, Eftpos over IP Remote Backup, Office Interconnections, and wireless CCTV operations.

The Install is free if you sign up for 12 months, you will have a Nanostation or Powerstation CPE installed depending on your requirements.

One of the main things with Northland Connect's Network is that it self healing and monitored by a Server that is in constant conatc with all devices on the network even the client device, this enables to to know when there is an issue most times before the client knows. please send me and email if you are intrested in this services (Sorry to trying to advertise) i would just like to know if peopler are intrested.

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#138267 16-Jun-2008 01:13

Any plans to bring your services to Hamilton?

Do whatever you want to do man.

hellonearthisman

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#138268 16-Jun-2008 02:47

NorthlandConnect:
stage one of our company was to learn and design a future proof network designed by northland not someone in a city office

Yeah them city office people have strange ways. I mean, what was that about, who will be on your 'not like' list next. You have already upset half the population of NZ, nice one.

timestyles

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#138269 16-Jun-2008 03:15

Congratulations on starting this service and I wish you lots of success. You don't describe the method that you connect the persons home to the Internet, would you please do so? I googled Powerstation CPE and looking at the documentation, it looks like you attach a high gain 2.5GHz antenna to the side of the house and aim it at a central antenna, is this correct? If so, do you use another high gain antenna at the central location or is it omnidirectional? if it's omnidirectional, what is the throughput when you have a number of houses all using the internet at the same time?

I hope that I have fully understood the process going on here, please correct me if I'm not. By the way, I'm in Christchurch which is flat. Are hilly locations better for this method because you have more line-of-sight locations to put the central antennas?

Thanks and best of luck.

(I doubt you'll get many people here on geekzone who live in the locations you're offering and happen to read your message, unfortunately).

mushion22

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#138273 16-Jun-2008 06:51

hellonearthisman:

Yeah them city office people have strange ways. I mean, what was that about, who will be on your 'not like' list next. You have already upset half the population of NZ, nice one.

Easy Tiger!

I think the point is that many broadband networks are designed by planners with little to no knowledge of the areas they are dealing with, which can lead to networks that dont reflect the needs of rural or small populations. I think, NorthlandConnect, you could be a little more diplomatic in your wording though if you want to be seen as credible.

Anyway, good job on posting here. You will also most likely note the efforts that some other ISPs put in to help people out through these forums, and the positive feedback (and customer loyalty!) they receive from doing so.

As far as the service is concerned can you give us any details about:

What is/will be your website address?
Exact dates for go-live?
Schedule for network rollout past the current sites, and do you plan to extend to other cities/towns?
Technology/Protocols used for your network (eg WiMax, WiBro, WCDMA, 802.11 mesh/wds, proprietary)
What equipment is required at the customer site and is this fully or partly supplied?
What will the customer require in terms of router equipment, and will it be using PPP(oE), Static, or DHCP? Will it support BGP4 for enterprise use?
What options will be available for Office interconnections and what protocols will be supported? Eg PPTP, L2TP, MPLS, Bridged Ethernet, Ethernet VLAN, etc.
What kind of layer 2 and 3 topology are you using? Eg Is the network a giant ethernet segment? Are there routers at the cell sites? Are customer connections bridged back to a central location and then routed?
What are the maximum contention ratios you will allow for the 60mbps backhaul? (or what is the minimum throughput you will guarantee?)
Is that 60mbps per cell site or per town back to HQ? Ie does smaller cell size = less contention within a town?
When you say QoS, what strategy will you use? Will you ensure minimum throughput and/or prioritise applications eg VoIP. Will it be possible to guarantee minima for latency and throughput for applications like VoIP or surveilance video?

Assumably you might not be able to answer some of those for commercial reasons, but would be interesting to know as much as you can tell us.

chris021

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#138304 16-Jun-2008 10:18

Hi,

I have a beachhouse in Doubtless bay where will the Mangonui site be located?

Chris

tonyhughes

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#138313 16-Jun-2008 10:43

NorthlandConnect:
Hi There,

Let me introduce myself, I am Matthew Greaves of Northland Connect Limited, I have noticed to see some comments of Northland Connect popping up so I have decided to sign up to answer any questions that might arise.

/snip/

One of the main things with Northland Connect's Network is that it self healing and monitored by a Server that is in constant conatc with all devices on the network even the client device, this enables to to know when there is an issue most times before the client knows. please send me and email if you are intrested in this services (Sorry to trying to advertise) i would just like to know if peopler are intrested.

Welcome to Geekzone. Your informative posts are welcome and encouraged.

Why not approach mauricio (pm user: freitasm) about having an official customer forum on our site. It would be a good service for your clients, and in itself, would be good exposure for your business?

Samsung

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scottjpalmer

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#138366 16-Jun-2008 14:10

chris021: Hi,

I have a beachhouse in Doubtless bay where will the Mangonui site be located?

Chris

Is that your Mum's house that she lives in? Or do YOU have a holiday home like you imply? ;-p

NorthlandConnect

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#138370 16-Jun-2008 14:43

Hello and thank you for the comments that have already been posted!

With our coverage, Northland Connect Limited are trying to lease all the high sites in Northland, these high sites are Kordia's main cell sites and are very high on mountians, Northland Connect cannot release what gear we will be using on our main sites other than it will have Virtical Polarity 90 Degree 20Dbi Sector Antennas with AP redundancy in case of network failure. We expect that we will push more than 25KM with the Ubiquiti nanostations LOS and 50+KM with the ubiquiti Powerstation.

All gear will be supplied to the client, except that the gear will remain the Property of Northland Connect Limited.
The CPE device has a built in router have a look at the nanostation if you wish http://www.ubnt.com/downloads/ns2_datasheet.pdf

Now I am sorry if i upset some with the city people comment I was not at all saying that they dont know what they are talking about in regards to Northland, im sure they do and I meant no offence, what i was trying to put accross is that we have fully! designed our network on how people use the internet we wernt constrainted by telecom and there rules, the plans are what the people of northland want and is affordable in respect to wireless.
we are if not lower than some broadband plans and some are nearly double what ADSL Broadband can offer to clients.

Now with mangonui if you can see a kordia cell site (most possible) then you will receive coverage, As i stated before
we are still in meeting with kordia to finalise a date that we can move our gear onto their Cell Sites, so i cannot publish a date till that time has come, I can say that im pushing for 2-3months time but that is not certain

NorthlandConnect

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Geek

#138371 16-Jun-2008 14:48

Im sorry, Northland Connect is for Northland only.
We will be franchising it 5 years times, so there could be a possibility of Hamiton Connect?

Kind Regards,

timestyles

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#138398 16-Jun-2008 15:43

Thanks for your reply. I asked about the antenna at the main central location, given the distances you said it is likely that while directional, you have a situation where you have many customer antennas sending a signal to a central location. To me, this seems to be a situation where you could have a lot of customers sharing a finite amount of frequency range. It's a long time since I did this sort of thing, so I'm a bit rusty, the maximum frequency range of the Powerstation CPE is given as about 400MHz.
In my opinion that's not much, I don't know the maximum data speed you can get out of a 400MHz frequency range, but assuming you have say 4 cycles per bit, that's an absolute maximum of 100Mb/sec, double that if you have two polarisation orientations, so you are probably looking at 25MB/sec maximum, shared across all the customers using that base location antenna. For a dozen or two that sounds okay, but a hundred customers might start to slow things down, say in the evening.

Is my reasoning correct? Rurally that sounds Ok, but Whangarei has a population of 50,000 so what's the plan there?

I'm not trying to be negative, I'm sure other people have done the maths much better than me, but it would seem to be an issue.

mushion22

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#138399 16-Jun-2008 15:43

Ok, so to summarise, your network will be:

802.11b/g using high gain/power equipment and antennas
Be propagated from Kordia High Sites in Northland
Will have 'last miles' upwards of 20mbps full duplex
Will have 60mbps redundant backhaul from each high site
Will be available to anyone with LoS to a connected high site within ~50km
Will be launching some time In early - mid Q4

Correct?

Will be interesting to hear more about what kind of QoS you will offer, and what kind of business services you can offer.

Quic Broadband

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timestyles

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#138403 16-Jun-2008 15:54

mushion22:
Will have 60mbps redundant backhaul from each high site

Actually this value is less than I worked out, so in order to be equivalent to standard phone lines in a city you'd want no more than about 10 customers per base station.

mushion22

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#138408 16-Jun-2008 16:02

That is just the backhaul, which assumably can be increased seeing as they are using Kordia backhaul.

802.11g can support up to 54mbps per channel (and there are 13 channels in the ISM). So if they had smart equipment that can use all channels simulataeneously they have a theoretical maximum of 702mbps per high site. Even more so on the downlink to the CPE if they employ some fancy propagation shaping and whatnot.

Throw in some interference, attenuation and contention and I imagine each customer is going to be guaranteed much less than that.

Thus I am interested in the QoS setup. Eg will those using VoIP be guaranteed 128kbps for phone calls?

Detruire

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#138419 16-Jun-2008 16:22

How much to install if not on a contract?

rm *

cyril7

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#138424 16-Jun-2008 16:25

Actually this value is less than I worked out, so in order to be equivalent to standard phone lines in a city you'd want no more than about 10 customers per base station.

Concidering the airinterface is 802.11(WiFi) you would not want more than 10 active at a time anyway. Obviously sectorisation will assist that air interface number.

Cyril

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