Ultimate Broadband Boosts Backhaul

Introduction

Ultimate Broadband is a leading-edge Broadband ISP based in the region of Canterbury on the South Island of New Zealand. Canterbury is the country’s largest region by area and second largest by population, and is home to Christchurch, the largest city in the region with a population of over 380,000.

The Broadband ISP was the brainchild of husband and wife team, Mike and Joanne Smith, created in 2009 to provide alternative broadband options to rural customers who often miss out on decent broadband services. With several broadband services based on mobile, wireless and fixed fibre broadband technologies, Ultimate Broadband is able to offer great value, great service and better broadband to their over 1,500 customers.

With ever-increasing demand, Ultimate Broadband was looking for a way to increase their backhaul bandwidth. They replaced their legacy equipment on the 5 GHz spectrum with multiple Mimosa B5c and B5-Lite backhauls. Link speeds improved dramatically from 40 Mbps to over 155 Mbps in the same channel width. The company has more links planned.

“We were pleasantly surprised by the performance we were able to achieve with the new Mimosa links,” said Mike Smith, Managing Director of Ultimate Broadband. “The radios are incredibly easy to deploy, and when you are building out a network, ease-of-use is vital.”

“We were pleasantly surprised by the performance we were able to achieve with the new Mimosa links.”

One of Ultimate’s networks, the Ruralnet network, provides high-speed wireless broadband connections to rural homes and businesses. The network is made up of hill-based high sites that cover large areas as well as flat land wireless “micro sites” that cover smaller areas due to natural obstacles, that deliver usable broadband services in some cases up to 40km + from a base station. The network is generally a line of sight service, meaning if the site can be seen from a customer’s home or business it is highly likely that they will be able to connect to the customer. They also operate several smaller repeater sites to provide coverage right into the high country where other services would not be available to those farming communities. Ultimate Broadband is also a Fibre reseller and is currently in the final stages of launching its UFB Fibre service on the Enables network in the Christchurch area.

In addition, Ultimate Broadband is in the process of upgrading over 50 of their repeater sites across the entire network to support more customers and faster speeds. The upgrade is already providing customers with peak speeds of 25 Mbps on a large number of repeater sites, with targeted speed across the entire network of 50 Mbps by mid 2016. With on demand TV, Netflix and other services now creating significant demand, these upgrades and improved peak speeds will mean customers will get faster overall speeds across the entire network once the rollout is complete.

“We have the technology now to provide customers the speeds they need and are thrilled when we can make a difference in their lives.”

The ISP continues to look for ways to improve its network. “We are always looking to grow our network,” said Mike. “We ask our customers - let us know where you think we should expand our network. We have the technology now to provide customers the speeds they need and are thrilled when we can make a difference in their lives.”

Ultimate has taken its network to the next level. Let Mimosa do the same for your company. The next generation of broadband is here. Mimosa’s backhaul products are available via http://www.mimosa.co.