Ever since I got bamboozled into deploying a WiMax basestation, I have been skeptical of tree penetration hype.
We have been deploying Cambium 450 in 3.5 GHz / CBRS and it’s great, but it doesn’t “penetrate” trees. OK, an SM within a mile can go through 1 or 2 trees, depending on the size/density/type of tree. And with the usual caveat that trees near the customer are more problematic than trees in the middle of the path. Some people say otherwise, but there were all sorts of glowing testimonials for the WiMax equipment as well. Maybe LTE has magic properties. I doubt it, but I haven’t tried it, I don’t want to repeat the WiMax fiasco. So I could be wrong. But when I’m wrong, usually it’s because I wasn’t pessimistic enough and things are even worse than I feared. Only on rare occasions do I expect a lion behind the door and there’s a beautiful lady. Usually there’s 2 lions. Certainly turning on CBRS made all our 3.5 GHz Cambium stuff work better, we got several dB higher xmt power, and usually cleaner spectrum. But the cleaner spectrum thing is only true until other operators fire up their stuff in 3550-3650. Even if you get a PAL, it’s not like nobody can use that frequency in the whole county. The interference at the edge of your PAL protection zone should be below some level that the SAS uses when authorizing nearby operators to transmit. But that level isn’t -99 dBm. LTE gear may be designed with better receiver sensitivity, that will help if the noise floor is really really low. On the other hand, does most LTE gear use the highest allowed EIRP? What about the CPE? That was another problem with the WiMax stuff, the CPE was 3rd party stuff that typically had kind of wimpy xmt power and not particularly high antenna gain. Maybe that’s not true of LTE gear, I haven’t looked into it. But pull out a Cambium 3 GHz 450b high-gain SM spec sheet and compare to the LTE CPE. From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Trey Scarborough Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2020 4:43 PM To: af@af.afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] LTE vendors Has anyone done a comparison or know of a whitepaper between LTE and Cambium? I am mainly looking at tree penetration or lower DB signals to actual throughput comparison. I have been told that LTE gets a little better tree penetration but if that is at a low rate that really doesn't help any. On 9/12/2020 10:03 AM, Darin Steffl wrote: It comes down to complexity. Ericsson, Nokia, etc are all cellular brands and to run and manage those complex LTE networks, you need full time engineers to manage, debug, and optimize things. Cambium is so easy, in comparison, there's very little extra learning to do in order to get it running great. Ericsson LTE probably would require months of training and needing to hire someone just to run the gear or hire expensive consultants to do it for you. On Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 9:49 AM Kurt Fankhauser <lists.wavel...@gmail.com <mailto:lists.wavel...@gmail.com> > wrote: 450m is the only way to do, especially if your already using the 450 platform in other parts of your network, there is an operator in my area with the Ericson system and they had a ton of issues with getting it up and running, not even sure if they ever got it all resolved. On Fri, Sep 11, 2020 at 9:00 PM Sean Heskett <af...@zirkel.us <mailto:af...@zirkel.us> > wrote: Yup what josh said lol. We tried the LTE thing and glad we switch to 450m...much easier. -Sean On Fri, Sep 11, 2020 at 4:43 PM Josh Luthman <j...@imaginenetworksllc.com <mailto:j...@imaginenetworksllc.com> > wrote: Having done one LTE vendor and 450m the only mistake I made was not buying the 450m sooner. Josh Luthman 24/7 Help Desk: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St <https://www.google.com/maps/search/1100+Wayne+St+Suite+1337+Troy,+OH+45373?entry=gmail&source=g> Suite 1337 <https://www.google.com/maps/search/1100+Wayne+St+Suite+1337+Troy,+OH+45373?entry=gmail&source=g> Troy, OH 45373 <https://www.google.com/maps/search/1100+Wayne+St+Suite+1337+Troy,+OH+45373?entry=gmail&source=g> On Fri, Sep 11, 2020 at 5:54 PM Adam Moffett <dmmoff...@gmail.com <mailto:dmmoff...@gmail.com> > wrote: And yeah, 450m might be expensive, but so is all the LTE stuff. You'll max out the legal EIRP with 450m, and get 8x8 MIMO. I think part of the magic with LTE is that it will connect with ridiculously low signal, but on a fixed system you probably won't really want the trashy signals anyway. Cambium also has LTE for whatever it's worth. The CBRS version is supposed to be available relatively soon (though I forget precisely when). I don't know if I state it as "fewer issues since there is no EPC", but definitely fewer complexities and fewer things to worry about. The connection from eNB to EPC has to be pristine, and the EPC comes with its own set of new terminology and new concepts to figure out. On 9/11/2020 4:06 PM, Darin Steffl wrote: I have seen lots to people doing 450M in CBRS stating coverage is nearly the same as LTE but way better speeds and triple the aggregate capacity due to mu-mimo. Way fewer issues too since there is no EPC. Just straight layer 2 with no bullshit. On Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:39 PM David Coudron <david.coud...@advantenon.com <mailto:david.coud...@advantenon.com> > wrote: We are looking at a new area to expand out network that has a lot more tree cover than our current footprint. We are thinking with the combination of CBRS and LTE, that we might be able to offer better coverage than with traditional fixed wireless options. We have started conversations with the following vendors, wondering if anyone has any hands on experience with any of them and what their impressions were: Blinq Airspan Baicells Ericsson The Ericsson equipment is in a class by itself price wise, but the others are similarly priced, and somewhere around double the price of PMP 450 stuff. Normally we would add more tower sites for better coverage, but this project will need to be done before the end of the year and building towers isn’t an option. We have good enough spread on the towers that we think we can do this with PMP 450 APs, but are thinking we’d get even better coverage out of LTE. Any opinions on the reliability and the manageability of the four vendors above? Sorry for such an open ended question, but not sure what to ask to be more specific. We know that we will have the LTE stuff to deal with like access to an EPC and so on, so not so much worried about that as more the manufacturers themselves. Baicells concerns us as they may get lumped in with Huawei. Thoughts? Regards, David Coudron -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- Trey Scarborough VP Engineering 3DS Communications LLC p:9729741539
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