PtP – Better Internet for Rural, Regional & Remote Australia (BIRRR)

This is our long story about over coming hills to get a nbn Fixed Wireless Connection!

We live on a farm between Ariah Park and Temora NSW. We are 9km from NBN tower in Ariah Park but have hills in between. My brother in law lives 1km from us which put him at 14km from a tower near Temora and us at 15km away. He was able to get NBN without an issue so we applied to get it. We had a technician come out and say we had strong signal from our roof so he set it all up. He said the green light would come on in a couple of hours and we would be set to go. It didn’t come on so we rang Telstra (our provider) who then rescheduled another visit by the same technician Of course we had to wait another week or two. The same technician came out and couldn’t work it out, said he would look into it and get back to us. We never heard back from him. We rang Telstra to get someone else out. They put us onto Skybridge (nbn installer company), we requested the same technician who put my brother in laws in.

So 2/3 weeks later he came out and he didn’t have any luck either. He said it is because we are past 14km from that tower (beyond nbn limits for Fixed Wireless). He said physically it was possible but NBN have gotten really strict with having to be within 14km from the tower. Another dead end. Telstra kept telling us we needed to go on satellite but we didn’t feel we would be any better off as we had friends who had a lot of trouble with it. Also because you still pay a high price for not a lot of data. We had upped our phone data and used hot spotting and shared data so we could get 45gb all up, which was never enough but much more than we used to get before we joined all our data together. Our kids were desperate for netflix like their cousins over the road!

We had a friend who knew a local technician who had bounced a signal off her in-laws, we got in contact with BIRRR and they told us to look into this. We knew it wouldn’t be ideal because we would have to share data with them (they have 6 kids) and it may slow down when we are all on it, this would have made us feel bad, as theirs is great now and we didn’t want to mess with their connection.

We contacted Michael, the local technician. He asked if we had a shed with power on our property that was within 14km from the tower. We had a tiny shed that had a pump in it and therefore power. It has to be waterproof and you need to put a cupboard in it to keep dust off. We needed to get the lot number from the rates- we rang the local council to get the lot number- they got on google earth and worked it out. Once we did this we could get an nbn location ID number (LOC ID) which Telstra needed to apply for NBN for us. This took a couple of weeks. It was then approved so Telstra scheduled a technician to come out a couple of weeks later.

We got our local guy Michael to come out the day before to make sure he would be able to bounce the signal from the small shed to our house (3km away). Of course, it wasn’t that simple as there were quite a few trees in the way.

Michael suggested we put an antenna on our big machinery shed (100m from our house) to pick up the signal from the nbn NTD (in the small shed) then throw it to our house. So the plan was for NBN technician to come out the day after then Michael back the day after that to set up the booster. Again, that didn’t work out as the NBN technician needed a pole to put on the shed to get some more height, he didn’t have one with him (apparently they are supposed to) so once again we had to reschedule for a couple of weeks….so frustrating. We rang Michael to tell him what happened, he thought that was terrible as he should have had a pole with him so he rang Skybridge and asked if he can just do the install himself. Skybridge said that was fine. So Michael came the next day, installed the modem into a cupboard in the tiny shed, put a booster on our large machinery shed to throw the signal to the antenna he put on our house roof. This took two days and cost us over $3000.

We are really glad we didn’t take the easier option and go with satellite. We now get 1000gb for $80/month, the boys can get internet in the machinery shed, we have really fast internet and the kids can watch Netflix, so despite the hassles we had to go through for 5 months, it was worth it!!

Disclaimer: This document is meant as an informative document based on my own research and experience. Any views, opinions, information etc. provided is not necessarily the same as that provided by NBN Co, BIRRR, or any other organisation referred to here. Prepared for BIRRR by Nina & Damien Gaynor.

The idea of getting a NBN fixed wireless instead of satellite has been the driving force
behind this project. I had looked at many ideas in the early stages of getting better internet, long before NBN being rolled out, from relaying a link from son’s ADSL2 in Bathurst with a link of about 15km using a high hill in between with solar, but this was given the flick when nearby a NBN fixed wireless tower was being built, only to find out about 90% of Peel Village was shaded by a large hill between the new NBN tower and village, which included myself missing out on NBN fixed wireless.
How to go about getting a link was to use about 2km Wi-Fi link from a neighbour that was within a NBN fixed wireless line of sight of tower, I had already a few years before I brought a box of 5 Ubiquiti Nanobridges (NB-5G22) while I was thinking about a long link intoBathurst.
The neighbour’s property had problems with line of sight from his residence to my house, but his shed was just enough to get a good line of sight to my home with a 5hgz Wi-Fi link, so then it was a matter of cabling between neighbour’s house and shed which was about 55m of cable, looking at the time of lying the conduit it was decided to run 4 cables in the conduit (4 x 55m), using only using one cable but have capability of up grading the service to allow more upgrading. The cable that was decided to use was a underground rated Cat6 gel filled cable to aid in keeping moisture out of it at all cost. The cable will power the Nanobridge by Power over Ethernet, so no need to run a separate power cable. There was a small problem of a wash away some 1m deep and about 4 m wide that was solved by running a 6.5m heavy wall pipe across the gap with the conduit running continuously through it to avoid moisture entering the conduit.

Screen Shot 2018-01-27 at 9.34.33 AM — View of Nanobridge from shed to my home about 2km away

Screen Shot 2018-01-27 at 9.38.41 AM — Junction box that has the spare cabling coiled inside for further upgrading

After I had got the link up and running and being neighbourly I ask the question that all neighbours like to hear and that is do you want to get off Satellite Internet or Telstra Mobile internet, the answer was a sounding “Yes”. Knowing that the link was with a very directional when using Nanobridges that is capable for links up to 50km I wasn’t sure how well they would work when alignment was slightly out, but to my surprise they do work under short distances without problems.

Screen Shot 2018-01-27 at 9.38.57 AM — Nanobridge at my home

Screen Shot 2018-01-27 at 9.39.06 AM — Nanobridge at Neighbour

Screen Shot 2018-01-27 at 9.39.14 AM — Nanobridge at Neighbour

Screen Shot 2018-01-27 at 9.39.22 AM — Nanobridge at Neighbour

Screen Shot 2018-01-27 at 9.39.29 AM — Final layout of Nanobridge Links to 4 Neighbours

Screen Shot 2018-01-27 at 9.39.40 AM — Original NBN Fixed Wireless map of Peel

The choice of which Wi-Fi gear to use is up to your personal choice, the Ubiquiti Nanobridges are a bit of an over kill for something like this link but as I had already had them there was no point in re buying something else that could have done the job just as well. There are quite a few internet calculator links that can used to work out the links if it is possible, but I used the Ubiquiti Outdoor Calculator. When using the Ubiquiti gear the main Nanobridge on the shed is set to be an “Access Point” and the 4 residences are set to “Stations”. This is only a guide of what is possible if you have the time to do as much as possible yourself. With 5 residences with kids using the NBN Fixed Wireless at a speed of 25/5 we all have Netflix. Total data use is approx. 700 to 800 GB a month and increasing.

UPDATE 6/7/17 Changing PtP from Fixed Wireless to FTTN

Wifi bridge going in to replace the existing bridge that will change our speed from nbn fixed wireless speeds to nbn fttn speeds of 100 mb with a 18.25km bridge from Bathurst to Peel village. 400w of solar running on a 24v setup running 6 x 12v x 7ah batteries with a total watt/hours of about 500.