Perth’s Pentanet Terragraph-based neXus fixed wireless takes on fastest NBN

The Perth-based innovator says its new mesh radio network can deliver speeds comparable to the fastest premium all-fibre NBN plans.

Stephen Cornish, founder and managing director of Perth-based Pentanet.

A Perth-based mesh radio network can deliver over-the-air speeds that are comparable to the fastest premium all-fibre NBN plans.

Pentanet founder and managing director Stephen Cornish, whose neXus mesh fixed wireless network recently launched in metropolitan Perth, has released speed data showing the new network’s capability.

Based on subscriber speed tests, Pentanet has delivered up to 970 Megabits per second up and down, an average download speed of 446Mbps over Ethernet and 214Mbps over Wi-Fi, an average overall upload speed of 333Mbps and average latency of 10 milliseconds. The speeds are comparable to NBN’s Ultrafast all-fibre plans.

Pentanet recently changed to using Meta’s “Terragraph” wireless system aimed at providing one gigabit speeds across the air, adopting the WiGig standard.

That wireless internet speeds can rival the fastest fibre connections questions whether there is any point in retrofitting fibre to existing connections. In offering wireless speeds in the hundreds of megabits per second, Pentanet also is getting in ahead of 5G millimetre wave (mmWave) which could push wireless internet speeds even further, once available.

Mr Cornish said wireless internet connectivity that could rival the fastest available residential fibre speeds offered a real alternative to retrofitting fibre to existing connections.

He said Pentanet had previously built a fixed wireless network where users connected via small “dinner plate” style dishes. The dishes had to be pointed at radios on towers.

“You had to have a direct line of sight back to the tower, so you could be within five kilometres of the tower and connect to it. But only about half of the addresses in Perth could connect and there were capacity constraints at the tower level.” That limited the wireless network to about 10,000 users and a maximum speed of about 120Mbps.

The new neXus mesh network operates differently. It’s still fixed wireless but users don’t necessarily connect directly to a tower. Instead, small individual “tissue box” like radios on users’ roofs connect to each other in an intelligent grid network which optimises the routes that traffic moves across it. Data is routed by the quickest and fastest path and is encrypted.

Stephen Cornish

Mr Cornish said Pentanet developed “the firmware, the equipment and software that runs everything”. “We’ve been developing that for three years.”

Pentanet’s neXus offers an early bird unlimited data package for $99 for the life of the connection, and a standard rate of $129 per month.

Mr Cornish said the mesh network could be strengthened in any area. “If we’re seeing an area where the average speed is starting to decline, we can just add another fibre exit point.

“It’s a much lower cost alternative to a fibre network to deploy. Yes, I think it could have been a good solution in the interim for the NBN.

“For that matter, we could work with NBN to use our technologies together, to better service regional towns. This is a very good last mile solution.”

He said radios were made in the US using Pentanet’s software and Meta’s Terragraph technology under licence. “No one else is using it like this in the world.”

The old wireless network supported about 6,400 users, whereas neXus with Terragraph could be scaled up to support hundreds of thousands of connections.

Mr Cornish said more than 11,000 people had registered to join neXus. Pentanet supplemented its operation with its 5G spectrum.

“It’s a lot better value and easier and cheaper to deploy than fibre everywhere and it’s a lot less intrusive, because you don’t have to dig everything up. But there was an engineering challenge to get to the position where we are today, where we can roll it out freely.”

Developing a similar mesh network in other regions “certainly was not off the cards”. Pentanet also continued to promote its cloud gaming system with more than 200,000 accounts across Australia.