W3 Connex builds Ontario wireless network

Canadian operator W3 Connex on Tuesday announced it was building a wide-ranging rural wireless network in Ontario, bringing broadband access to 60 communities, with help from the Canadian government.

The eastern Canadian fixed wireless provider has secured $1 million in funding awarded by Blue Sky Community Network, an organization chartered by the Canadian government to bring broadband to rural Ontario. The funds will pay much of the equipment and deployment costs of the network, capital expenditures that W3 Connex wouldn’t be able to justify without government funding, said Brian Walters, CEO of W3 Connect.

The network will consist of a fiber backbone running through the region connected to 26 access towers using DragonWave’s wireless Ethernet BWA technology. The point-to-multipoint systems will link the tower grid together and back to the fiber backbone as well as provide high capacity links to larger businesses. DragonWave is selling W3 its new AirPair Flex equipment, which uses low latency Ethernet to transmit 10 Mb/s and 100 Mb/s links. W3 will use Alvarion BreezeAccess gear to link residential and small business customers to the network. While W3 will use 18 GHz and 23GHz spectrum for backhaul, the access component will use unlicensed spectrum.

"There’s really nothing else up in these areas that would interfere with the unlicensed frequencies," Walters said. "It’s only when you get closer to the urban areas where you would need to use licensed spectrum."

W3 said the network is designed to bring a minimum of 1.5 Mb/s of bandwidth to 80% of the households in the 60-community region. The entire network will be up and running in four to six months, Walters said.