Wireless ISPs solve the last-mile problem, the speed bottleneck between fiber optic Internet connections at telecom service providers and the businesses and residences where Internet users work and live.
"About a year and a half ago, we had access to a fiber line, back to our data center, and we started talking about WISP -- doing wireless shots back to this fiber jump point," said Alex. "The first proof of concept was my house...and we started playing with different antennas. The first couple of times it didn't work. And then finally we got it online. At my house I started using it as I usually do, for SSH sessions and Netflix, and it was working great. The throughput was amazing. When there was no one on our network I was getting 40 Mbps symmetrical at my house."
"One of the big breakthroughs," said Rudy, "was these cheaper antennas that are out there, that are outdoor and waterproof and they have little Linux embedded systems so they're capable of doing all kinds of different functions."
Thanks to FCC rules changes in recent years, unlicensed 5.8 GHz outdoor antennas with respectable through-put are now available for a few hundred dollars. At higher price points, equipment costs make it harder for wireless ISPs to compete with DSL or cable.
Alex and Rudy had looked at antennas from a number of manufacturers -- Redline, DragonWave, EnGenius -- but none of them proved suitable. Then they tried an antenna from Ubiquiti Networks.
"Ubiquiti really nailed it and that really allowed us to do this project," said Rudy.
It turns out that MonkeyBrains isn't the only company that sees a future in wireless broadband.
"We certainly have been approached by several companies with that sort of model or business plan recently," said Barry Fraser, telecommunications policy analyst in San Francisco's Department of Technology, in a phone interview. "It's certainly something that has generated a lot of interest among ISPs. It's less expensive than trying to lay cables everywhere."
MonkeyBrains currently has about 100 antennas, each of which may serve one or many customers -- an average of 5-10 per antenna, Rudy estimates. It's adding about 10 customers a week. One of its largest clients is KQED-TV, San Francisco's public television station. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is another.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
