On Tuesday, Sept. 20, AT&T announced its upcoming network technology initiative called Project AirGig.
AT&T's Project AirGig
According to Android Police, AT&T announced initiative could be the very future of company's network infrastructure - both wireless and wired. The Project AirGig is the result of over 100 patent applications and 10 years of research.
This experimental technology developed by the AT&T company uses plastic antennas positioned along medium-voltage lines in order to achieve high broadband internet speeds. The new technology initiative will allow AT&T to get rid of the necessity of tearing up roads and sidewalls and burying fiber lines and tearing up roads and sidewalks in order to expand its network reach. The company will not need expensive network towers anymore and in their place could use much lower cost access point and repeater equipment operating on advanced network technologies.
AT&T's AirGig project is actually based on some entirely new technology that will allow creating a highly distributed network model able to completely change the way both wireless and wired internet are deployed in the future. The infrastructure used for this new technology exists already and it is nothing else than the current power lines.
AT&T created reliable methods that allow using existing medium-voltage power lines in order to transmit ultra fast millimeter wave signals between many access points. Through various technologies such as complex base stations, powered signal repeaters, or unpowered "guided mode" antennas, AT&T will be able to inexpensively distribute its network at speeds and into places that were never before possible without extremely costly cell tower or fiber line deployments.
According to networking experts, there is a great potential of what AT&T is planning with its Project AirGig. This truly impressive technology has implications for various environments, such as rural, suburban and urban. In AT&T's vision this technology could become the exoskeleton of a 5G network.
According to PCWorld, AT&T already tested its AirGig project in outdoor locations on campus settings. Certainly, with such innovative technologies lower latencies and faster speeds are coming. The future of mobile networks will probably change even the traditional internet access and vastly increase its availability.
