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September 1, 2005

Telabria Deploys 850 Square Miles of Pre-WiMax

By Glenn Fleishman

The UK firm has rolled out its Skylink service across Kent in Southeast England: The service provides up to 10 Mbps of service in each direction along with VoIP. The fiber/wireless backbone crosses 1,300 square kilometers, 675,000 households, and 60,000 businesses.

The symmetric offering is critical, Telabria says in its press release, because it’s so seldom available. Businesses need upstream bandwidth to serve Web pages, transfer huge documents, and push material out to clients, customers, and the general public. The company offers 1.5 Mbps to 10 Mbps at distances of up to 12.5 miles from a base station.

Skylink offers 1.5 Mbps symmetric for £49.99 per month and 3 Mbps for £79.99 per month. Premium symmetric services are £249 for 5 Mbps and £369 for 10 Mbps. Residential asymmetric services include 1.5 Mbps (£24.99) and 3 Mbps (£34.99) downstream with 512 Kbps upstream.

A full variety of VoIP options for personal and business use are also available as overlays.

The service uses 5.8 GHz bandwidth and pre-WiMax gear which Telabria is referring to as “WiMax-class” equipment. Since WiMax devices aren’t certified yet, it’s all about performance rather than interoperability.

Telabria has also installed 74 Wi-Fi hotspots. Skylink subscribers will have free access to those locations, some of which are in London and the rest throughout the Southeast.

Posted by Glennf at September 1, 2005 9:45 PM

Categories: Voice, launches

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