Internet over shortwave

At the risk of sounding like a very dull boy (all work and no play?) I admit that much of my reading involves radio and gadgets, both out of personal interest and the search for new material to blog about.

A few weeks ago, I came across a business article about KNL Networks, a provider of software defined radio based in Oulu, Finland. KNL is the inventor of "Internet Anywhere," which uses shortwave radio to provide internet to the most isolated places on Earth.

The KNL development team.

Recently this start-up company secured $10 million in private investor funding to enhance its "cognitive networked HF radio system" (CNHF), an alternative to traditional, expensive satellite-based internet.

"Surprisingly, communication doesn’t exist in many areas around the globe. In the regions with satellite communication coverage, the data bandwidth is often so crowded that existing applications suffer from bad service quality.

"If you operate in a remote location in Asia, Africa, South America, the Arctic region, or anywhere in the ocean, you know the problem. The lack of communication is putting your business on hold," KNL claims on its website.

Toni Linden, CEO of KNL, tells Squelchtale.com the system is used on every continent, mostly in shipping and military applications.  Propagation is measured at the user's location, and the radios feature very fast link establishment – less than 50 milliseconds, in order to maintain usable shortwave frequencies over hundreds and thousands of miles.

“Our radios receive the whole spectrum all the time, so we don’t use scanning but real time broadband receiving. This way, we can see and measure everything that’s going on in the spectrum and we can maintain network connectivity.” 

The rack-mountable CNHF radio.

Cost varies depending on customer needs, but can be obtained for as little as $300 per month. Users receive a sophisticated rack-mount radio, but must install a broadband HF antenna and 3G cellular and GPS. 

Once the radio is powered up, it guides the user through set up and is then monitored remotely at headquarters. KNL claims the bit rate on data transfer is fast enough for text, voice and most streaming video. Information is also encrypted, making it suitable for the military and mission critical applications.