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Radiant wireless "rocket science" - fails Welsh broadband test

It turns out that the launch of Locustworld mesh wireless doesn't have one big rival, after all; at least, not in the sense that it might, if BT had adopted Radiant Networks Meshworks technology. BT Wholesale has abandoned the idea.

According to a report on Personal Computer World's web site, the Welsh trial of rural broadband via high-speed wireless by BT Wholesale has ended in a rejection of the technology.

At the start of the trial in Pontypridd, South Wales, BT Wholesale said that mesh radio had the potential to widen the reach of BT Wholesale's broadband delivery. At the time the trial was announced, back in June last year, there were encouragingly positive predictions from Phil Thompson, director of network access: "BT has identified Meshworks as a truly wireless access technology which promises to overcome many of the technical and commercial limitations of current point-to-multipoint wireless access systems," he was quoted saying, on Radiant's web site.

The primary objective of the planned network's evaluation was to assess the performance of Meshworks in a typical deployment scenario and fully understand its potential for deployment in BT's broadband network in the future.

Radiant is making light of the failure: Geoff Butcher, Radiant's chief executive officer, told vnunet.com: "It was never intended to deploy this technology in its current form commercially."

However, it's hard to see what grounds there are for optimism. Meshworks was rejected mainly because of cost; it's an expensive technology, requiring the installation of towers which require planning permission, and needing a special frequency allocation; and its top speed is 25 megabits per second, but it can drop to 4 megabits. But on top of cost, there was no great satisfaction with "customer experience" either.

Butcher said Radiant's technology had proved its worth and that he believed it could be adapted to make it suitable for commercial use. However, a quick look at an animated illustration (see pic on this page, above) shows that the unit has several separate, steerable dish antennae inside the outdoor unit which creates the main network. It can't be made cheaply, say observers.

Other Radiant trials continue.

See original PCW story.