AT&T Likely to Introduce AirGig in 2017 for Superfast Internet Speed Using Power Lines

AT&T AirGig

Slow-as-snail internet connection at your home could now be the thing of past. AT&T is all set to provide electric fast internet speed to all its home phone service subscribers. AT&T, the Dallas based telecommunications giant, is planning to deliver super fast internet services through its latest project.

AirGig, AT&T’s Latest Project

On Tuesday, the company revealed its new project called AirGig. The company is focusing on delivering multi-gigabyte wireless internet speed at an affordable price. The company is planning to do so using power lines. As for launching its initial field trial, AT&T labs is expecting it will happen sometime in the year 2017.

This Will Set New Standards in Terms of High Speed Internet Connections:

The company is expecting AirGig to redefine industry standards in terms of high speed internet. This is likely to be totally different and innovative. AT&T is dedicating AirGig to delivering extremely quick internet services to all its home phone service users using a new technology that transmits signals over power lines. However, the signal will not go through the conductive power lines. Therefore, this is surely expected to be different from the efforts of Google and IBM for broadband through power lines in use for over ten years.

What Makes AirGig So Special?

A lot of things make AT&T’s AirGig project so special. Some of them are listed below. Let’s take a look:

  • This AT&T project, named AirGig, will use inexpensive plastic antennas for delivering data signals. These antennas will be stuck on already existing power lines, which will play a crucial role in the process of creating an electromagnetic field for the purpose of guiding the signals across the wires.
  • AirGig makes the best use of the prevalence of power lines in the United States. This may include over 200,000 miles of very high-voltage lines and local distribution lines of almost 5.5 million.
  • According to Mr. John Donovan, the chief strategy officer at AT&T, it can be deployed very easily as compared to the fiber. And it can deliver electric fast wireless internet connection to all of the home phone service subscribers of AT&T. Easy to afford plastic antennas make AirGig inexpensive to execute. However, he did not say anything about the exact amount of money to be charged to the users.
  • Fiber optic cable and cellphone towers are costly to install. This is why AirGig definitely has a distinct advantage over both of them.

 

Beneficiaries:

Without a doubt, AirGig will surely benefit local phone service subscribers of AT&T. AT&T itself will also be benefitted with this. As for reasons, take a look at them below:

  • This technology has everything necessary to widen the reach of AT&T. The company will be in a solid position to deliver service in rural areas that falls outside the geographic territories of its own. The same will stand effective for the overseas areas where AT&T provides local phone service.
  • This technology will help more internet users enjoy internet connectivity at superfast speed needed for streaming 4k videos on Netflix or chatting using technologies like Facetime.
  • People residing in the remote rural and global areas and regions that are cut-off from access to internet will also be the mainstream beneficiary of AT&T’s AirGig project.

At last, internet service in the past was as slow as snail. Much of the credit should be given to data delivery methods (Through Wires) and other technical snags interfering with emergency radios. All this collectively limited internet speed significantly.

However, the company is now aiming for a minimum LTE speed. This will ensure an amazingly fast internet connection for local phone service customers wanting to enjoy high bandwidth applications like virtual reality.

Summary:

AT&T is expecting to introduce AirGig technology in select cities of the United States by sometime in the year 2017. Potential customers have no choice but to wait for its lab tests to be successful. Moreover, the AT&T researchers are leaving no stone unturned to overcome some challenges relevant to such approaches carried out in the past. Following are the two challenges:

  • Achieving Gigabit-per-second speeds
  • Keeping deployment costs low

AT&T’s AirGig project is still undergoing tests in the experimental stages. Let’s hope they are successful.

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