Wireless Internet - A View From the Bottom

We have been blessed with wireless ideas of great promise for a decade beginning with LMDS and Virginia Tech up to the Wired Road and Blue Ridge Crossroads Economic Development Authority. Hope still flickers obstacles remain. One of those obstacles, the cost of customer premise equipment, is about to fall.

Ubiquiti has two new products due by the end of the year. The first is a $50 outdoor directional radio, the NanoStation Loco2. All you need is a screwdriver and an Ethernet cable. The second is the $40 Bullet - a compact radio without an antenna so you can use either an omin-directional or a high gain parabolic for special applications. There is a router in the works - the AP-1000. For those who must build their own, the Routerstation 3 ($70) offers three LAN and three radio sockets. All of these radios run open source software meaning there are hundreds if not thousands of geeks working to make it better.

But don't expect to use them with either LMDS or The Wired Road. LMDS gear costs thousands and CPE estimates for The Wired Road costs around $400.

Now if we can find cheap tower space and an inexpensive backhaul ...