The executive and technical teams at Nextlink Internet spent significant time evaluating Tarana’s broadband products, and selected Gigabit 1 (G1), Tarana’s next-generation fixed wireless access (ngFWA) platform as a major partner for new wireless deployments and upgrades.
Key considerations for selection included G1’s game-changing innovations such as excellent non-line-of-sight performance, interference cancellation, and industry-leading scalability. Another factor was the speed of deployment, with large installations taking a few weeks to complete.
As an example, Nextlink connected 1,000 subscribers in just one month at speeds of 500 Mbps with towers supporting as many as 209 subscribers per G1 base node.
A Commitment to Performance
Nextlink Internet is a rural-focused provider of high-speed internet and phone services in 11 central-US states. They have appeared on Inc. Magazine’s list of fastest-growing companies, the Inc. 5000, six of the last seven years with cumulative revenue growth over the last three years of 170%.
As one of the larger winners in the Connect America Fund (CAF) and Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) programs, Nextlink has made a commitment to provide gigabit-speed broadband to over 200,000 rural households and businesses.
ngFWA for a Great Subscriber Experience
With Tarana’s G1 platform, Nextlink is offering broadband speed packages of 500 Mbps today and plans to offer gigabit speeds. This is above and beyond its original regulatory commitment of 100 Mbps.
Higher speeds have also enabled Nextlink to go after new markets and the additional revenue growth they represent without sacrificing performance or customer experience. “Tarana allows us to cover a greater geographic area in a much shorter time and capture an audience that was previously unattainable without sacrificing speed, capacity or reliability,” said Cameron Kilton, Chief Technology Officer at Nextlink.
Rapid deployment has been key to Nextlink gaining market share, retaining and delighting their customers, and offering faster speed tiers at a higher ARPU — a true win-win.
Nextlink was able to roll out a G1 network of 700 CBRS base nodes (BNs) and 7,000 remote nodes (RNs) in just 12 months. “We had 1,000 customers on Tarana G1 within a month after deploying towers,” said Baker. This is the kind of end-game broadband that will close the digital divide and change lives.
Proven Performance
Tarana’s G1 performance has been field-proven by Nextlink in a variety of conditions. “We have one customer who is 4 miles from the tower getting 620 Mbps downlink and 140 uplink,” said Kilton. “We also did some testing at 9.5 miles, in a non-line-of-sight situation, and we were able to pull 460 Mbps down and 60 up. That’s something previously unheard of.”
“Tarana has really differentiated itself by using its noise cancellation techniques compared to the competition in the rest of the marketplace. The non-line-of-sight and near-line-of-sight characteristics as well as being able to leverage multipath in a way we haven’t done before has enabled us to increase coverage and capacity in areas that were previously challenging,” said Kilton.
Better Together: Fiber and ngFWA
While wireless is a large part of Nextlink’s network infrastructure, they also offer fiber where it makes economic sense. “With the power of hybrid infrastructure — fiber and next-gen fixed wireless together — we can leverage both technologies in a complementary way to bring excellent internet to rural areas much sooner,” said Baker.
Nextlink recently completed a broadband network that provided high-speed connectivity at up to 500 Mbps speeds for Wise County, Texas using a combination of ngFWA for residential subscribers and gigabit fiber service for 20 county offices. With the rapid deployment G1 enables, Nextlink was able to provide coverage to 95% of the county within 7 months.
This deployment, as is the case for Nextlink’s entire network, offers fiber-class wireless as a seamless complement to fiber for end-game connectivity. “Being able to use both fiber and wireless gives us flexibility to address local needs,” said Claude Aiken, Chief Strategy Officer at Nextlink. “Some areas are better served with fixed wireless, and some with fiber. Our commitment to the quality of the consumer experience means that our fixed wireless customers often won’t move to our new fiber in their area because they love their fixed wireless experience so much.”
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