WISP Traveler: OMEGA tech, Lanskroun, Czech Republic
My name is Pavel Tenenko
and I represent OMEGA tech s.r.o.
Right now we are in the beautiful town of Lanskroun
in the eastern part of the Czech Republic.
We provide services to about
5,500 customers
including business customers.
Besides wireless networks
we have a lot of fiber infrastructure
in the Lanskroun area.
We operate in a town
with a lot of technically skilled people,
so there has always been
a lot of competition on the market.
So we have never had the luxury
of inferior competitors
providing us an advantage.
Its exactly the opposite:
there has always been a lot
of highly skilled competitors,
so we have always needed
to be one step ahead.
When we were starting our WISP
we had to decided about our strategy
and to distinguish ourselves from our competitors
we made the decision
to focus on the quality of services
because nobody was doing that here.
There were at least 10 ISPs that
were offering a wireless connectivity
but nobody was able to provide a high quality service.
So we have started from there
and I think that it was the right decision.
We stick with it until today!
Our company started to offer
internet connectivity in 2001
In the same year we built one of our first APs
that is located at the church tower behind me.
We have started in 2.4GHz
and we have upgraded our technologies a few times.
Gradually we have come up to the decision
to build a homogenous network.
That means to have one single interface.
I do not remember exactly the year
when we have decided
to go with RouterOS and MikroTik.
We keep working in 5GHz.
we have been working with 5GHz for around 10 years now.
Recently, 5GHz is getting to be
really crowded in our territory
by both providers and end users.
Our network engineers face
problems that we have to solve
for customers in the center of the town
and in areas with high penetration.
The main task to search
for new technologies
was our team mate
who really was actively dealing with
finding anything that will solve
the interference issues in town.
And he found RF elements,
the Symmetrical Horns.
On the user forum he learned
about training.
So our guys took the training,
they collected some knowledge about the antennas
and took a few units to try them out.
Your marketing sounded very promising
so we were really eager
to verify it on our own.
And it really worked.
I have read marketing materials
so I was really interested to see the performance in real life.
And I was fairly surprised
that Horns performed exactly as advertised :)
We are using 30° Horns, mostly
because we have huge problems with interference
so 30° beam width looks like the best
to deal with interference
and also the most efficient
because we have so many customers
that 30° is about the maximum cluster width.
90% of the antennas we are using right now
are 30° Horns.
Of course we are using also other beam widths
but in lower quantities.
We are using Horns exclusively in noisy environment
and on new built APs.
But for example in villages
with low density of customers
we are still OK with the old traditional Sectors.
Basically we try to utilize those antennas that we have
because they are not bad and functional
but Horns are better, especially in noisy environment.
They are working really well
and sometimes it's vertical beam width
is an advantage
Of course, there is always a way to improve things
but we think this Horn is 95% of the perfect antenna :)
We count on Horns in our future plans
because most of the places are getting
really noisy and the interference is high
even in the villages.
So we are gradually migrating to Horns
even in the villages.
In regards to the growth of our network
we are planning to continue with improvements
of our network in the Lanskroun area and its surroundings.
We want to use fiber where possible
and in places where fiber is not an option
we are planning to improve our wireless network
as much as we can.
We will use RF elements Horns
to achieve the improvements
because we have the proof right here in the town
that despite the fact
that interference is really high in Lanskroun
and traditional sector antennas can not be used here
but we still are able to use RF elements Horns.
So we hope that they will work for a few years
in the villages and other places
with lower interference
and we hope that our co-operation with RF elements
will be as good as it was so far! :)
Thanks for collaboration to all folks from OMEGA tech s.r.o. :)
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