AireBeam is Arizona's leading provider of Broadband Internet and VoIP telephony service. In an effort to expand its reach to rural parts of the state, the company has chosen to partner up with Exalt (News - Alert) Communications, in order to use its innovative next-generation wireless connectors for a much larger Internet infrastructure. As a result, the companies were able to deploy a 150-mile gigabit Ethernet backbone with Exalt's ExploreAir systems in various counties across Arizona, including Pinal, Maricopa, Cochise and Yavapai.

While true fiber connectivity is unavailable in most of these areas, AireBeam was able to achieve fiber-like speeds through microwave signals. Installing fiber-optic cables all over rural Arizona would have been prohibitively expensive, but wireless microwave solutions are able to effectively cover a much larger area at a much lower cost. All in all, the company now operates 120 different microwave access points that cover nearly 5,000 square miles of inhabited Arizona regions.

“We chose Exalt because of a number of important factors, not the least of which were price/performance, a complete outdoor-designed solution, proven reliability in hostile environments like Arizona during the summer and monsoon seasons, and support,” said AireBeam owner, Gregory Friedman. “We are extremely satisfied with our choice. The network's performance has been exactly as it was predicted to be in path-length studies performed by Exalt application engineers.”

This network carries both Internet access as well as dedicated VoIP communication lines for customers, and Exalt's systems provide enough bandwidth for plenty of expansion. The wireless microwave solutions are able to deliver on both bandwidth and speed, which ultimately gives rural customers the same speed and ease of access to the Internet, as well as the ability to switch to a much cheaper VoIP phone system instead of their traditional landline phones.