The objective of Blue Sky Net is to construct the required wireless, open access infrastructure to serve communities in Northeastern Ontario that currently have no or limited access to high speed data communications.

Transmission and backhaul equipment will be installed on towers throughout the coverage area, of which several will be newly constructed. The network utilizes a hub and spoke architecture with multiple subnets. These subnets interconnect with Fibre Networks in multiple locations.  These connection points also provide the interface to existing ISPs serving the region. Point-to-point Backhaul radio links from local towers carry the traffic back to the  fibre POPs where bandwidth is fed from.

For the last mile access to customers, towers in the network typically transmits radio signals at 900 MHz and some at 5.8 GHz. Residential customers will typically access the network at 900 MHz. Initially customers will access the service with building mounted antenna installed by a central service for all ISPs. If an area, or community, reaches a critical mass of customers within a ½ -1 Km radius, 2.4 Ghz 802.11 devices may be installed and customers may access the network with WiFi cards. Higher bandwidth users who have a Clear Line of Site to the towers and are within 5 Kms of it may require network access through the higher 5.8 GHz connection where available.

Transport Technologies

The Transport Network utilizes a hybrid fibre/wireless design employing existing fibre facilities to access bandwidth and provide equal access for ISPs combined with state of the art fixed wireless broadband technologies.

The transport technology solution includes the following components:

• Fibre backbone POPs providing access to the  and ISPs
• 50-100 Mbps 18 GHz Fast Ethernet backbone access links (licensed wireless) that are upgradeable to 240 Gbps should it be required in future.
• 36 Mbps 5.8 GHz Ethernet backbone links upgradeable to 72 Mbps backbone (license exempt wireless) utilized as the last link in a subnet where lower traffic is expected.
• Ethernet switches at each of the subnet aggregation points
• UPS backup power supplies at each of the tower sites to backbone network integrity in the case of a power interruption.
• SNMP manageable elements to ensure the highest availability network

Access Technologies

The local access fixed wireless solution consists of either point-to-point or point-to-multi-point radio paths between the base station tower and the customers. Point-to-point wireless is used to connect customers requiring 5 Mbps or higher (e.g., VPN service) and point-to-multi-point is used for the majority of the residential and small business connections. The Access technologies employed in the Blue Sky Broadband network are a combination of 900 Mhz, 2.4 Ghz WiFi 802.11b FHSS (Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum) and 5.8 Ghz OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) licence exempt fixed wireless technology to ensure maximum coverage in dense tree foliage and challenging terrain (that may require non-line of sight). The coverage areas of these technologies enable customers to receive the signal if they are typically within a 12 km radius of the tower. The proposed network is configured to provide considerable overlap at the fringe areas of most base stations, thereby increasing the probability of partial line of sight to more potential users. 

Next >