What is Fixed Wireless Internet?

What is Fixed Wireless Internet?

Fixed wireless internet is an internet service provided to homes and businesses in urban and rural locations. Fixed wireless uses radio waves and communicates from a land base Tower to your home or business location. It’s called “The last mile” because wireless internet can reach areas other types of internet services cannot.

Fixed wireless providers are called WISPs. “WISP” stands for “Wireless Internet Service Provider.” Mile High Networks is a local WISP in Yavapai County, Arizona.

What hardware do we use with Fixed Wireless Internet?

Fixed wireless internet uses antennas we mount to your home or business (or within your yard). This antenna uses a wireless signal over radio waves to a fixed wireless antenna mounted to a land-based tower. From your home or business device, your connection will pass through your router, your location-based antenna, to the tower (internet), and then back.

Towers have larger antennas, called access points, that can hold and transmit more significant bandwidth than your smaller home antennas. Because your service is provided via this wireless signal, you must have a clear line of sight (LOS) or near line of sight (NLOS) from your antenna to the tower’s antenna. Depending on the technology, things like trees, hills, buildings, or other objects obstructing the signal can cause significant service-related problems.

How Does Weather Impact Fixed Wireless Internet?

Fixed wireless antennas are mounted to land-based towers and are within a 10-mile radius of your location. With this communication being closer, fixed wireless subscribers will experience fewer issues with the weather than satellite subscribers.

But that doesn’t mean zero interference. Rain, fog, wind, snow, etc., can still play with your connection. The further from the tower you are, or the denseness of the weather, does matter. However, seeing storms pop up around you doesn’t mean you should worry. With fixed wireless, you have smaller areas that can be negatively affected by bad weather.

Does Fixed Wireless Internet Mean You’ll get High Latency?

Latency is expected with all types of internet services; however, as mentioned above, with your antenna transmitting a signal to a land-base tower within a 10-mile radius from your location, your latency is expected to match closer to DSL or cable service providers.

Is Fixed Wireless Right for You?

With advancements in today's technology, wireless internet provides the same speeds and, in some areas, faster speeds than landline connections with fantastic reliability wherever you are.

If you’re looking for an internet service provider in Yavapai County, contact Mile High Networks to see if we are the right provider for you.