licensed microwave
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What's the maximum bandwidth I can get from microwave?

Private licensed microwave can support up to an OC-12 of bandwidth (per radio) and four OC-12 radios may be combined into a single antenna ("dual-feed") for a practical point-to-point limit of OC-48. We say "practical" because the number of radios is limited to the number of available frequencies in any given band.

That being said, you can generally expect at least a full OC-12 / gigabit connection between any two points. It should be noted that "gigabit" in microwave parlance doesn't mean that you're getting a gigabit throughput. It means that you're getting a gigabit hand-off. Actual throughput is 600-800 megabits, each way, by combining the outputs of four OC-3 radios. A chief benefit of this configuration is that each radio transmits at a separate frequency and so a failure in any one radio has no effect on the others.

The exception in gigabit radios is microwave at 60GHz (unlicensed), where a single radio can push 1.2 gigabits in each direction. The 60GHz frequency is limited to distances of 1/4 to 1/2 mile.

Products:  GIGABIT  400 Mbps  OC-3  200 Mbps  100 Mbps & 8-T1  100 Mbps  20 Mbps & T1  10 Mbps & T1
Unlicensed Wireless:  15-30Mbps & 1-4 T1, 5.8GHz License FreeBridgeWave 60GHz | BridgeWave 80 GHz
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