New York Recording Studio Beams CDs and DVDs Across Manhattan Skies

Uses RAD's Broadband Wireless Multiplexer to Connect to Broadband Internet

• Application
• - Broadband Wireless
• challenge
• - To quickly transfer very large files where fibre is not available
• Solution
• - RAD's AirMux-200 provides broadband Last Mile connectivity from an office building in New York City directly to the Internet service provider (ISP), thereby bypassing the slower T1 or DSL network.
• Benefits
• - Data rates up to 48 Mbps (18 Mbps full duplex throughput)
• - Low cost unit
• - Simple to install
• - Compact unit and antenna save space
• - License-free band reduces costs and speeds deployment

Huge Business Opportunity for Wireless Broadband

Rainbow Broadband Inc., a wireless network operator, specializes in providing high bandwidth services to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that do not have access to fibre. "Most SMEs in Manhattan are located in small buildings all over the city," says Rainbow Broadband CEO Russell Hamm. "They need faster service but they can't get it from a T1 network," he explains. "Huge digital files are being used more and more for office communications, such as architectural drawings and engineering designs as well as multimedia. Fibre is not an economically viable solution in the city, so we're providing high bandwidth services to SMEs by beaming files through the air to go over and above the carrier."

A high-profile customer that benefits from Rainbow Broadband's services is Masterdisk Corporation, one of the world's leading audio, video and multimedia mastering facilities. It masters CDs and authors DVDs for the biggest names in the business and for every genre, from the Beach Boys to the Beastie Boys, Queensrÿche to Queen Latifah and King Sunny Ade to B. B. King. Master recordings are massive files that require client approval before pressing hundreds of thousands of CDs or DVDs. The available T1 or DSL infrastructure was creating a major bottleneck in Masterdisk's review process, as it required several hours to upload and download the heavy media files to the Internet. Rainbow Broadband proposed using broadband wireless to provide a faster communications solution.

Compact Unit Provides Fastest Internet Connectivity

After checking at least five competing products, Rainbow Broadband found that "RAD's AirMux-200 offered the best performance by far. It beat the competition hands-down in terms of both speed and size," states Hamm. "It offers six times the bandwidth of the T1 network, so it moves the files very fast. And the focused beam is a big advantage for Masterdisk because it assures secure communications." The AirMux-200 unit installed on the roof of Masterdisk's 10-story building on 45th Street beams the bandwidth to another AirMux-200 unit located on the roof of a Rainbow hub building on 34th Street. From there the files are routed directly onto the ISP's fibre network and onto the high speed Internet. "Landlords like the idea of AirMux's compact antenna on their roofs," adds Hamm. "They don't appreciate other products that have large, ugly dish antennas." Masterdisk's wireless connection to the Internet speeds up its approval process, turning around jobs much more quickly and efficiently.