Qualcomm and Facebook this month announced an effort to deliver high-speed internet to urban areas around the world over unlicensed, high-band spectrum.
The chip maker and social media giant said Qualcomm’s chipsets would be integrated with Facebook’s Terragraph technology, which uses millimeter wave wireless backhaul to establish efficient outdoor broadband connectivity in the unlicensed 60 GHz band.
Facebook argues that Terragraph enables “fiber-like” speeds of multiple gigabits per second without the need to build expensive fiber networks. Officials said the partnership would allow leading manufacturers to then develop solutions for fixed wireless access in that spectrum.
Qualcomm added that other features, including TDMA-based protocol, time synchronized nodes, channel bonding and massive antenna array, could overcome obstacles in densely populated areas as well as curb costs and time to market.
“Terragraph cloud controller and TDMA architecture coupled with Qualcomm Technologies solution’s 10 Gbps link rate, low power consumption and early interference mitigation techniques will help make gigabit connectivity a reality,” Irvind Ghai, product management VP at Qualcomm’s Atheros subsidiary, said in a statement.
The companies expect to begin trials of the system in mid-2019.
Filed Under: Infrastructure
