Towerstream, Orthogon take Manhattan

Broadband fixed wireless carrier TowerStream and vendor Orthogon Systems have successfully deployed a non-line-of-sight wireless connection between buildings in midtown and lower Manhattan, through a field of skyscrapers and other buildings that traditionally have posed too much obstruction for other technologies.

The link, between a midtown office at 40 West 57th Street and TowerStream’s point-of-presence on 6th Street, extends for more than three miles, bending around the Empire State Building, the GE Building and other structures.

“This area of New York City is just about the toughest non-line-of-sight shot you can make,” said Jeff Thompson, president, chief operating officer and co-founder of Towerstream.

“The deployment is a classic proving ground for our technology,” added Phil Bolt, president and CEO of Orthogon Systems. The company’s OS-Gemini 5.8 Ghz system was designed to address the signal fading that occurs when point-to-point NLOS technologies navigate through obstructions. Orthogon’s Multi-Beam Space-Time-Coding (STC) technology transmits multiple signals around obstacles to reconnect at the receiving end.

The Manhattan deployment was carried out for a specific TowerSream customer, whose identity Thompson declined to divulge. With the successful deployment behind it, TowerStream will work with Orthogon Systems again later this month, as TowerStream makes its services available in the metropolitan Chicago market. The carrier also has deployed equipment from Cisco Systems, Aperto Networks and DragonWave in a few New England markets.

“All of our customers want to know two things,” Thompson said. “Does the weather affect this technology, and is it secure? The weather doesn’t affect it, and it is secure. This is not 802.11.”

In terms of transmission security, Orthogon offers a proprietary scrambling technology that can be used in tandem with TowerStream’s end-to-end VPN service.