So you’ve made the excellent choice to switch to Bluespan Wireless Internet Service. You may have done it because you heard about our smooth connectivity, guaranteed bandwidth and knowledgeable customer service team, but your experience with many ISP’s could have been that you didn’t get the service you were promised.
Interference usually comes in the form of latency in a network, power outages during inclement weather or when your ISP does maintenance on their system equipment. Bluespan has those bases covered when it comes to delivering quality service for you since we don’t depend on the traditional cable system or a satellite. Instead, we give you a radio mounted at your house that receives signals transmitted from our towers.
How do we provide you with such reliable high speed internet? Aside from delving into a complete physics lesson, we can give you a better picture by explaining who uses what in terms of the airwaves. “Airwaves” is just another term for radio waves. Radio waves and the complete science behind how they behave can be a complex topic, but we’ll spare you the drawn out explanation as much as possible.
Radio waves are electromagnetic (EM) waves created when an alternative current flows into the air. They are all around you in the atmosphere. There are layers of different wave bands starting with radio in the lower areas and microwaves in the highest layer. Radio waves are ideal for communications since they stay close to the surface of the earth.
Each band has a frequency measured in hertz. With the term “hertz” tossed all over the tech world, you are probably familiar with the measurements at least a little bit. Your computer, for example, uses gigahertz, applied to measure the machine cycles or speed of your CPU.
The first layer of frequency is measured in kilohertz, which is very low to the ground. The most crowded layer of frequencies start in the megahertz band, which is used by CB radio operators (yes, it’s still a hobby in Southern Arizona!), HAM radio operators, AM/FM stereo towers, cell phone service towers and a number of RC toys.
Cell phone provider ranges can vary, usually up to 1900 megahertz depending on your provider since they own or lease certain towers, and the towers all vary in height and ability to transmit.
Wi-Fi signals reach up into the 2.4 gigahertz range, and Bluespan Wireless service uses frequencies in the 5 gigahertz microwave range. Frequencies are designated from extremely low, which ranges from 3-30 hertz to extremely high, which ranges from 30-300 gigahertz.
Essentially, Bluespan’s signal can reach you more effectively since most communications operate in lower radio wave layers. Down in “radio land”, you contend with a lot of other traffic from devices operating on the same frequency, plus concrete buildings, traffic signals, neon and fluorescent signs and solar activity in the form of storms and flares. Particularly at this time of the year, CB and HAM operators using up to the 27 megahertz frequencies experience the phenomenon of “skip”, which is created by solar wind that brings radiation to earth and interferes with radio waves. Skip allows an operator to communicate with other operators all over the world, but it’s really hit or miss which state or country you will connect with on a particular day. This is why when we set up our towers and antennas we make sure we can get over such atmospheric noise. Can you imagine how frustrating your internet service would be if the signal was so unreliable?
We install higher antennas on our towers that are capable of getting over the interference from lower frequencies and other devices that share our signal band. Very tall trees would interfere with our signal, but Southern Arizona has only an isolated few rather than an imposing tree line like you find in other areas. That’s what makes all parts of Southern Arizona a perfect fit for Bluespan Wireless service!
Questions about how you can get connected? Contact us by calling 520.207.0549 or visit sales@bluespan.com