In short, "it's all about the frequency, baby!"   These new "mmWave" antennas use frequencies in the 60 to 90 GigaHertz range, which produces small, tightly-packed wavelengths in very narrow data beams (Fresnel Zone) which translates to a staggering amount of data capacity. Think of it like a "narrow, high pressure water jet" versus a "fanning, cone-shaped water spray" from a hose. That target standing 50 feet away is going to get a much larger quantity of water from the jet than the spray.

Now, mmWave antennas are not new. We've been using point-to-point mmWave antennas for years to connect our repeater sites together (single antenna to single antenna). They work great, delivering hundreds of times more bandwidth capacity than their lower-frequeny counterparts. However, due to the narrowness of the mmWave beam, the mmWave manufacturers have been faced with immense challenges designing an antenna that can serve multiple client antennas in different directions at the same time.

Recently they have begun perfecting these new "point-to-multipoint" mmWave systems by using Beamforming Technology, which is essentially a grid of smaller directional antennas within the larger antenna. The transmitter picks specific small section of the curved transmitting-side "grid" that best faces the distant user. This results in the ability to manage multiple narrow beams, serving multiple distant clients, with much less interference and noise than traditional low-frequency wide-beam wireless antennas.

As manufaturers ramp up production, pricing is coming down too! This means we are able to deploy large quantities of these mmWave systems across our network and pass along the volume savings to you in the form of low-priced, high-speed packages.

There are down-sides. Using these high frequencies and narrow beams means that:

1. Line-of-Sight is critical. Any large fixed object (like a tree or part of a neighbor's house) that blocks more than about 40% of the wireless signal's Fresnel Zone area can severely impact communications. At 1.5 miles away, a 5Ghz antenna produces a 20-foot circular area, whereas a 60-Ghz mmWave antenna produces a 5-foot circular area... that's a 16x smaller area, so any obstructions in this tighter beam have a much more pronounced affect!
2. You need to be close, typically no more than a mile or two away. Air particles and objects tend to impact and block higher-frequency signals much more than low frequency signals, so mmWave needs to have shorter distances to minimize the natural signal degredation that occurs.

Keep scrolling to see how we have solved these shortcomings and why our competitors are in big trouble!

To save costs, most current fixed wireless and cellular providers have fewer, but typically taller (more expensive) towers to serve many hundreds of customers from each of them. Often their customers, especially in rural areas, are many miles away from their towers, and the higher-frequency mmWave beams simply cannot travel such distances reliably. They thus are forced to use lower-frequency antennas (traditionally 5-Ghz or 6-GHz for Fixed Wireless and sub 1-GHz for Cellular) which have longer distance and better object penetration, at the tragic trade-off cost of far slower speeds. And don't forget, with fewer sites you are "sharing" the available bandwidth serving that site with many hundreds of others! This is often why their internet performance seems to go from bad to worse when everyone is home in the evenings streaming movies, playing games, and participating on other high bandwidth activities.

Ayera has taken a different approach. Over the past 10 years we have deployed a web of many hundreds of repeater sites throughout Stanislaus, San Joaquin, and Merced counties. Some, of course, are on traditional towers and tall structures, however many are on shorter strategically-placed locations such as commercial building rooftops, neighborhood schools and churches, community fire stations, local farms, dairies, hullers, and perhaps even your neighbor's barn! We partner with a growing number of local businesses and residents because we want lots of options to serve you unobstructed at close distances. We also want to minimize how many customers each repeater site serves, so that there will always be plenty of bandwidth available. Our hard work and these valued partnerships means there is a great chance your location will have that critical line-of-sight needed for this new groundbreaking wireless technology. (And if you don't have UltraSpeed™ available yet, we want to know about it so we can figure out who, how, and when we can partner-up to get UltraSpeed™ into your neighborhood!)

Comcast/Xfinity, Charter/Spectrum? Cable internet has respectable speeds but often poor reliability given the nature of their ever-aging neighborhood shared-bus Coaxial cable systems which have huge costs to upkeep, install, and upgrade. For pricing, their playbook has always been to get you in with a teaser rate, then sneakily ramp-up their pricing and stack on bogus "taxes", "fees", and "surcharges". It usually reaches the point you have to threaten to leave to get them to adjust back to a reasonable price. And, if you are rural, forget about it... you are not worth their time and effort.

AT&T or Frontier Fiber? Now that AT&T and Frontier have been allowed by the FCC to abandon DSL and their aging underground copper plants, fiber is their only play left. Fiber is actually very good if you can get it. It allows amazing speeds and will generally not degrade over time like copper wiring does. Fiber placed underground is generally very well protected... that is until that wayward backhoe or auger hits it. However underground fiber is also ridiculoulsy expensive and slow to install. Customers have been known to wait months or years for an order to complete! Aerial fiber on poles is less costly but prone to damage from vandals, falling tree branches, etc. If you are rural, forget about it... you also are not worth their time and effort.

Starlink? They are a decent choice if you simply have no other choice. $599 to $2,500 High-priced self-install kits, $120/mo to $500/mo plans (yikes!) with a history of steady price increases, and degrading speeds over time have shown that Starlink satellite internet is still satellite internet, even if it has a shiny "low-earth orbit" sticker on it. Their own CEO admits their satellites will need to be replaced to the tune of $5 to $8 BILLION every year! Plus, what will happen to your pricing when all their government subsidies run out?