I see this Althea internet is coming to New Jersey. Is this thing going to take off, or is it crappy speeds? Apparently it will be significantly cheaper than Xfinity, etc....
Possibly both. It's last-mile mesh networking. That's a mouthful. Let's explain.
Right now, you probably live in a neighborhood with powerlines and telephone poles. Each house has lines connecting it to these lines. Your internet comes from the regional provider (Xfinity, etc.) and goes down these lines in to each house.
What Althea does is take internet from a regional provider and shoot it to one location, probably one house. The Althea router in that house then wirelessly shoots internet to other houses with Althea routers, creating one network of neighborhood houses talking to one another, sharing bandwidth. Think of your network at home: you have a router and a bunch of devices connected to it - your laptop, phone, TV, etc. Now make it neighborhood sized.
The explain it a little more here:
Althea
It has incredible utility in rural areas with less telephony infrastructure. Not so much in suburbia, except that it should be cheaper. Likely slower than Xfinity and others (Wireless, afterall), but still faster than 56k or DSL.
