| Aktino: 100M Down By MIMO Bonding 5 Pair |
| Written by Dave Burstein |
Ericsson's 500 meg runs only a few hundred meters, and is not ready for mass deployment. Aktino, using  similar technology, expects to deliver in May ADSL2+ equipment that can offer 100 megabits well over a kilometer and possibly two. Co-founder Hossam Salib believes this natural for 4G cellular backhaul as carriers move to 20 and 40 meg on hundreds of thousands of towers.Co-founder Michail Tsatsanis is a pioneer in reducing noise across multiple pairs of phone wire. Using 2 or 3 FPGAs, Aktino gear monitors each line and cancels interference between them. Traditional bonding raises speed in direct proportion to the number of lines; MiMo bonding does better by canceling the noise in the binder group. The more lines monitored, the higher the performance gain. Salib reports a carrier bonding 4 lines found a 27% improvement while 8 lines provide a 35% improvement. Salib also tells me the prices of this entire class of equipment have been dropping rapidly, about 50% in the last two years. “Ethernet over copper” is becoming an alternative to wireless and fiber backhaul for a significant subset of wireless towers, although many (?most) towers require a longer connection than the Aktino of Ericsson gear can support. A repeater/signal regenerator would be a natural nest step for increased reach. The “cell site exemption” in the U.S. effectively limits multiple pair technology to incumbent telcos. With the incoming FCC fearful of AT&T/Verizon wireless dominance, some are thinking of eliminating that rule. |
