Earthquake killed your network? Satellite-over-balloon to the rescue! Two years after the devastating Sendai earthquake and subsequent tsunami rocked north-east Japan, mobile operator Softbank has updated its floating mobile phone base station system to include satellite comms for extra resilience. Networks faltered after the 2011 quake, with mobile phone towers knocked out of action. Softbank’s …
snowweb asked "Why the microwave backlink to the truck, when it's connected to the truck by a cable anyway and100M is short enough for a CAT6 cable?"
If you reread the story, you will note that the balloon is not tethered to the truck. The truck is somewhere up to 5Km away from where the balloon is located. Thus there is no wired connection between the truck and the balloon.
Because the balloon is providing the affected area with a cell site, while the base station truck is connected to surviving infrastructure and can talk to multiple balloon sites. These two locations are able to be up to 5km apart, and the microwave system means not having to run 5km of ethernet cable over badly disrupted ground. The power to the balloon comes from a small generator or battery bank which the balloon tether plugs into.
Seriously, did you consider actually reading the article?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
