About our network
We use a mix of high-tech to bring Lightning Broadband’s economical and reliable high speed internet services to an area’s homes and businesses; including low-latency direct fibre and/or hybrid wireless + fibre broadband technology (fixed wireless internet).
How we bring high speed broadband to you.
While our primary focus is rolling out Fibre To The Premises (FTTP) in new greenfield developments, in some retrofit and other situations hybrid fibre/fixed wireless internet is more appropriate.
The following are two explanations of how our hybrid solution works. One is a basic summary and the other a more technical explanation for those who would like to know a bit more about the hardware behind the magic.
How our broadband works
– the basics.
We install a fibre link to an area identified as being part of the Australian fibre network; which may be quite some distance from your premises. This acts as the conduit for the large amounts of bandwidth we acquire from the best of Australia’s tier-1 providers.
Via a super-fast and reliable microwave links; we then direct this bandwidth to a receiver centrally located on the top of a tall structure in an area – that could be an office building, apartment complex or a shopping centre (an example is shown in the video on this page).
After being processed by various communication equipment (all this happens in the blink of an eye), we re-broadcast the signal from a transmitter on top of that building to a small fixed wireless internet receiver mounted on the rooftop of your home or business.
The receiver is mounted either on your TV antenna or a small mast we’ll provide if you don’t have a suitable mast already in place. A cable is run from this mast through your roof and down the wall to a wall plate we’ll install for connection to your compatible router (or one we supply) or direct to your PC.
You’re then ready to enjoy blisteringly fast and reliable fixed wireless broadband internet! If you’re wanting an NBN alternative, contact us today to see if our services are in your area – we’re rapidly adding towers!
A more technical explanation
of fixed wireless.
The following explains how we achieve breakneck speeds and low-latency internet connections in Australian residential scenarios where fibre to the actual premises isn’t available, using fixed wireless technology.
We install a fibre link (single mode, single strand, multi-spectrum fibre) into an area already provisioned as being “on-net”. This acts as a peer-to-peer (P2P) link to our DC (DC-HSDPA = Dual-Carrier/Dual-Cell) and Transit providers.
For redundancy purposes, we acquire transit from the nation’s leading tier-1 providers such as Vocus, PIPE, Telstra and AAPT.
We then use a mix of 24Ghz and 60Ghz (mmWave) fixed wireless backhaul links that boast state of the art wireless technology to beam this bandwidth to a central location within an area; such as the rooftop of the local shopping center. This backhaul link is symmetrical, low latency and capable of throughput greater than a gigabit.
The signal is captured by our receiver and terminates at a POP router, which handles routing and IP termination and assignment.
From there, the signal is transmitted through access switches to the fixed wireless radio equipment, then to an array of sector antennas atop a building or tower for re-broadcasting.
The signal is received by a small microwave receiver mounted of the roof of the client’s premises. An outdoor rated ethernet cable is run from the mast through to an RJ45 wall plate for connection to a WLAN compatible router or directly to a PC.
