I used to work in that Ionica building (after Ionica left). Like Ionica, the building design was cutting edge but didn’t live up to expectations! The ‘smart’ building used computer controlled cooling towers, vents and a giant block of concrete (as a ‘thermal battery’) to manage the heating and cooling, in place of regular air conditioning. The building ran on an ancient OS/2 desktop computer - I wonder if it is still functioning?

But the system didn’t work very well at all - in winter, it was freezing cold, and in summer it got too hot. Ironically, you could open the windows by your desk to get a cooling fresh breeze of air, but then the building manager would come around and complain that you had to shut the windows, they were disrupting the ‘smart ventilation’ airflow!

Was expecting to read about Rabbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_(telecommunications) which was another failed wireless communication venture and think DECT roaming for a quick grasp of what they offered.

Can't say I had heard of the company in the article, though living inside the M25, you are kind of bubbled from internet offering choice limitations.

Warning: long-winded story with catchy title which is misleading. The only reference to weather is that the service was "dropping out during wet weather." No further explanation is provided. They also cite another problem due to "tree foliage", but this has nothing to do with weather.

From a last mile 3.5, 3.65 and 5.x GHz band WISP perspective, wet weather isn't what killed that, but overall better radios from the competition, for PtMP access to AP radios:

ubiquiti (rocket M5 and 5ac, and associated family of radios)

cambium pm450 and cambium's 802.11n and ac based radios

mikrotik radios

various telrad, radwin and other vendors' 802.16e based stuff (now obsolete, but wasn't quite so in 2015)

those ionica things are so weird, rare, were manufactured in very low volumes and cost way too much. these devices are from a much earlier era, around the same time as the cambium (motorola) FSK100 series PMP radios. they never achieved any significant market penetration in the global low-budget WISP equipment market.

Sonofon (now Telenor) in Denmark had a similar issue using FWA for internet service. Internet would drop out in the rain, the signal couldn’t parse over small stretches of water and leafs would get in the way in the spring and summer time.

The stupid part is that people had already been asking if water droplets would’t be an idea, and technicians working on the test equipment had noticed that it wouldn’t work in the rain.

This was one of my very first shareholdings. I worked for Nortel who made the kit, and I remember an excited presentation in the staff canteen where the upcoming ISDN capabilities of the system were described.

I learned from that experience...

My country switched to cable in the 1980s. Its always fascinating to me seeing old pictures where every house has an antenna!

Wireless technology can be rolled out quickly while fibreglass networks are a massive and costly undertaking. Neatly putting all infrastructure into the ground is certainly more aesthetically pleasing IMO.

In Sweden that sector died as the fiber network was extended. It did fill a niche that shrank as fiber was laid down.

I lived in Cambridge, UK in the 1990s and after moving house in the second half of 1996 we had Ionica service installed.

I moved out of that property a year later, wonder what happened to the hardware...

If rain attenuation was a significant issue for Ionica, then won't it be a significant issue for the UK's 5G roll-out? Both system appear to run at about 3.5GHz.

That patch antenna array looks both beautiful and a pain in the ass to design and simulate.

I wonder what he meant by "lingering signs of bt monopoly". Only they and i think Virgin actually supply lines. And the price for a landline is absurd. Like completely out of touch with reality. We have to pay extra for basics like caller id and even to call uk mobile phone numbers! Which is totally ridiculous. Landlines have a quarter of the utility and cost 7 times more (easily) then a call/text only mobile plan.