Reviews
Part of Fixed wireless: questions about the unit, path and hub
Fixed wireless sign-up checks: 5 items, 4 sector questions
Fixed wireless sign-up checks: survey, install, equipment, recurring charge and site visits, four mast-sector questions, and who owns the antenna.
A fixed wireless link looks cheap because the expensive part, digging a trench up the road, never happens. The costs that replace it are real and mostly sit outside the monthly figure.
Before you sign, check five items in the order they arrive and ask four questions about the mast sector that the monthly figure is really answering. Prices vary by provider and by building, so these checks are what make two offers comparable.
What to take away
- Ask what the install includes and what counts as extra. A roof, a long cable run and a pole are the three items that usually are not in the quote.
- Find out who owns the antenna and what happens to it at the end.
- The capacity at the mast is shared. A price that looks unusually good for the headline figure is often a busy sector.
The five costs, in the order they arrive
- Survey. Sometimes free, sometimes credited against the install, and occasionally chargeable if you do not proceed. Ask which. The FCC's
Five costs in arrival order
- Surveyfree, credited, or chargeable
- Installwall mount versus roof or pole
- Equipmentyours, loaned, or rented
- Recurring chargethe advertised figure
- Site visitsrealignment, antenna, power injector
getting broadband questions and answers is a reminder that availability is recorded per address. In the FCC's Broadband Data Collection, a provider reports a location as served where it has a customer there or can complete a routine installation within 10 business days. A survey is the only thing that settles what your building can actually have.
- Install.The variable one: a wall mount at first-floor height and short cable run is one number, while a roof, pole, scaffolding, or long internal run is another. Step-by-step work is covered in fixed wireless setup. 3. Equipment. Yours, theirs on loan, or theirs and rented, each with a different consequence when you leave and when it fails.
- The recurring charge.The figure on the advertisement. 5. Site visits after the install. Realignment, a replaced antenna, and a failed power injector all happen after install, so ask what is covered and what is charged, because this is where a cheap contract becomes expensive.
Ask for the broadband label before the quote
The federal transparency rule, 47 CFR 8.1, requires any provider of broadband internet access service to create and display an accurate broadband consumer label for each stand-alone service it currently offers for purchase. The label has to be shown at each point of sale: the provider's website, close to the advertised plan, and any other sales channel, including a provider-owned or third-party retail location and over the phone.
That makes the label the first document to put next to a fixed wireless quote, because it is where the provider's own published charges for the plan sit. Two limits matter for a business buyer. The rule covers mass-market services, and it excludes offerings customized for the customer through individually negotiated agreements, so a bespoke business quote may have no label at all; ask for the same items in writing instead. And once you are a customer, the provider must give you the archived label for your plan on request within thirty days, which is useful when a renewal price does not match what you signed up to.
The question the price is really answering
Capacity at a mast is divided among everyone connected to that sector. The
Questions to ask the provider
- How many customers on this sector?
- Minimum contracted, or only a maximum?
- What happens when the sector fills?
- Can I move sector or site?
- Are the answers published or contracted?
provider decides how many customers to put on it. That decision is the main thing separating one offer from another at similar headline figures, and it is not usually on the quote.
Ask directly:
- How many customers are on the sector serving this address?
- Do you publish or contract a minimum, or only a maximum?
- What happens when the sector fills? Do you add capacity, or stop selling?
- Can I move to a different sector or site if this one degrades?
A provider who answers these honestly is worth more than one who is a little cheaper. Normalizing two offers so their figures mean the same thing is the method set out in provider comparisons.
The FCC's own measurement work, Measuring Broadband America, exists because advertised figures and delivered ones differ in ways a single test cannot show, and a shared radio sector is one of the clearer cases.
Owning the antenna, or not
You own it
- Up-front cost
- Higher
- When it fails
- Your cost, your timing
- When you leave
- It stays, and may be reusable
- Roof penetrations
- Yours to make good
They own it
- Up-front cost
- Lower or nothing
- When it fails
- Their cost, their timing
- When you leave
- It comes down, and there is a visit to arrange
- Roof penetrations
- Agree in writing who makes good
The last row is the one that gets forgotten. Removal leaves fixings in a wall
You own the antenna or they do
You own it
- Up-front cost
- Higher
- When it fails
- Your cost, your timing
- When you leave
- It stays, may be reusable
- Roof penetrations
- Yours to make good
They own it
- Up-front cost
- Lower or nothing
- When it fails
- Their cost, their timing
- When you leave
- It comes down, visit to arrange
- Roof penetrations
- Agree in writing who repairs
Comparing it against the wired alternative
The comparison is not cost against cost. It is cost against what the two products actually are. A wireless link installs in days and depends on the weather and a shared sector. A wired service takes weeks or months and then behaves the same in February as in July.
For many businesses, the wireless link is a good second path and a compromise as a first. Priced as a backup that turns on by itself, it is usually cheap.
Priced as the only connection for a room of people on calls, it needs the sector questions answered first. voip systems explains what calls will not tolerate.
Common questions
Why is the install quote a range?
Because nobody has been on the roof yet. Get the range narrowed after the survey and before you sign, with the conditions that move it stated.
Is there usually a data cap?
Less often than there used to be, and a fair use clause is common. Ask what triggers it and what happens then, in the contract's own words.
Can we negotiate the install charge?
Sometimes, usually by taking a longer term. That is a trade, not a discount: price the whole term before agreeing to it.
What if the link degrades after six months?
Raise it in writing with your baseline readings attached. Without a baseline the conversation is about opinions, which is why the survey figures are worth keeping.
