Why would they EOL their 2.4 Force before having this ready if they knew there would be an upgrade path from Force 200 to AX? Who makes these types of business decisions? These types of decisions are putting WISPs like mine out of business.
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For all those looking for e1k 2.4GHz radios, I’d urge you to go to your Cambium RSM and have them look for stock. There are still radios available, although some are probably located outside of the USA.
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This is a double edged knife. They built e1k 2.4ghz but sales were less than expected, mostly because of being almost a year behind everyone else. @Eric_Ozrelic and I plus a few others have been after Cambium to do 2.4ghz AX since at this time the focus for everyone else has been 6ghz and 5ghz. Other manufacturers havent updated 2.4ghz hardware since N as well.
Now to the sticky part:
I have about 200 2.4ghz radios out there, so If I am typical then the numbers do not measure up to being profitable.
We are so far lucky that Cambium has entertained 2.4ghz AX and though development has halted for the time being, there is hope that once the e4k radios are fully licensed to AFC then development will resume.
@Fedor_Trutsko care to expand?
We have some Ubiquiti AC 2.4 out there and it’s alright, but feels more sensitive to noise than ePMP 1000. We were replacing our Mikrotik 2.4GHz deployments with ePMP 1000 2.4GHz and seeing better results, but since we still have that stock we may end up redeploying it. Mikrotik has connectorized 2.4GHz AX radios out but haven’t released any SXT/LHG CPEs yet, and I hear early performance at long distance needs improvement. TVWS vendors like WiFrost are starting to look appealing.
Not being able to get spare APs is going to put us in a bad spot.
Part of that I think was also the cost of the e1K 2.4ghz APs. I know it’s a double edged sword - I get that. But it’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy too. They assumed sales would be low, so that prices needed to be so much higher, and then that (IMHO) helped sales to be lower in the process.
It wasn’t just that people wanted it to be cheaper, it was also that Cambium choose not to have a LITE (10 SM) version of the 2.4 AP. Personally, I think that would have helped earlier adoption, and I think if more people had seen how good (GREAT) the performance of them is, I think that would have helped a lot. I know for us (and I’ve made LOTS of positive posts about this) that we considered 2.4Ghz to be dead dead… we had customers who could barely get 1-2mbit on other brand (non-cambium) 2.4Ghz gear… and we almost talked ourselves out of an experiment with Cambium because there was no LITE AP. I eventually decided to, changed a couple clients out, and their speeds went from 1-2 Mbit to 20-30-40 Mbit with the same mount, same antennas.
So - I think that a LITE AP at the same price as the 1000 5Ghz LITE AP would have helped adoption. Certainly Cambium was concerned that selling LITE AP’s at a lower prices may not have recovered in SM prices, and that those AP’s may never have been loaded enough to get licenced to FULL APs (and who knows - they may have been correct) but I know for us, we would have been more eager to experiment with a lower barrier to launch.
Or a even if they’d done a bundle deal for the FULL AP price with some included SM’s – something at a ‘break even’ price point as a sample pack. I’m not sure – I’m just saying there seemed to be a belief that sales would be low, so prices were high, and there was no ‘starter deal’ promotion (that I saw) and those all may have conspired to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 
ALSO - they missed the mark a bit with the ‘Integrated’ SM’s too… so initially there was kinda no viable SM’s. There’s virually no situation where an 11dB antenna at 2.4Ghz would be usable for us. If we’re using 2.4, it’s usually because of trees – so we need as much gain as possible. Most of our old older (non-Cambium) 2.4 gear is with 24dBi grids, so the Cambium 2.4 1000 SMs weren’t ideally suited for real world usage. We ended up buying 1000 Connectorized SMs and adding 3rd party 22dBi or better DualPol antennas, and that was good. But it would have been great if the Force200 had been built with a larger 24 or 27 dBi antenna. In a nutshell, the 1000 series 2.4Ghz gear has missteps in my opinion - they were still good (actually very good) but missed the target and fell short of being as great as they could have been for our needs if they had talked to WISPs and build what we needed, which would have really been just some small changes.
I do understand that it’s a tricky business model… BUT FOR ME – if the 2.4 AX performance with a higher gain antenna is were we think it would be, we’d buy 300-500 right away to convert all our 2.4 over to Cambium AX. I know that’s not huge but as it is now… with no new Cambium solution, and with the older 900 & 2.4 options EOL, it really leaves WISPs in the bush with no Cambium options, and that’s not profitable for Cambium either.
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This is pretty much the problem we had, 2.4N could have been a much bigger option for us except for the antenna limitations. 11db and 22db (yes marketed as 24 but really was 22) were just not realistically enough. Yes I could get a kpp reflector and fit a 11db on it but that got me only up to 24db when I really needed a 28 to 30db dish.
Dont get me wrong though, pulling 115mbps on a 2.4ghz ptp link is impressive when the 5ghz link with much higher system gain was only doing 50ish.
Eric Ozrelic had wormed his way to an ear with some pull in Cambium and he and I had a long conversation about the needs and wants of a 2.4ghz AX solution and an estimate of what I would purchase in quantities. I know he talked to a few others and this sort of got the ball rolling.
If 2.4ghz AX was available right now, I would be looking at 5 APs and 32 f200 type SMs with another 100 SMs over the next 12 months. (My 2.4ghz needs are substantially lower now but still high enough)
If everyone who sees this thread adds their purchase needs it may spark Cambium to reopen development.
This thread is one of the most popular and discussed - AX 2.4ghz is one of the products with the most interest…
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This solution is still highly needed for rural areas - I completely understand that getting ePMP 4500/4600 up to snuff takes precedence here (we’re still eagerly awaiting good tdd performance and backward compatibility) but we urge Cambium to pick this back up when there are development resources to do so. I could see us purchasing hundreds of these radios if they perform well, and can be swapped into F200 dishes. We’ve got 300-400 ePMP1000 or F200 in 2.4, with no real upgrade path moving forward…
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Agree with all the comments. We are primarily rural and use a lot of epmp 2.4 but simply can\t get any more equipment. We have a couple of spare APs but connectorized SMs seem to have evolved into unobtanium. We were really hoping for a 2.4 AX solution mid year. We have begun deploying PMP450 2.4 as a stop gap having the UL SMs connectorized to use with high gain antennas. We were really hoping the 2.4 AX would allow us to retire a large part of our 900 gear. Really hoping the 2.4 AX comes to fruition. We have also been looking for an alternate solution such as 6Harmonics TVWS. I’ll have to check out WiFrost as well.
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We would absolutely deploy 2.4 AX, we have rural deployments that we could totally utilize this solution and we took over another wisp where we also have 900mhz customers… here’s to hoping!!
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Bumping thread again. Really want to see Cambium throw some resources at the new 2.4Ghz AX lineup 
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Easily one of THE. MOST. DISCUSSED. topics, and it seems that 2.4ghz AX is one of the top most interesting products for sure!
In a perfect world, I’m really voting for SM’s with the highest gain antenna possible (or connectors for external antennas).Only having a 17dBi offering would likely be less effective at NLOS than we’d want. 
But with the right antenna configuration, this could be an absolute killer product.
Every time I see this post resurface I think, this is it! LOL. Really hoping this eventually arrives. It would be a major game changer for us and many of our customers. +1 on a connectorized SM. Need to be able to get to those who need it most. 90 percent of the existing 2.4 we have is connectorized. I will take what I can get though! .
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Reminds me of how close I used to track the GPS sync category with another manufacturer. It had a weekly “Soon” update.
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LOL. Not just you though…
This thread has received 4,200 views!!
Course maybe 4,0000 of those are just @Riverrat, @DigitalMan2020, @ninedd, & @Connor_Brown hitting refresh 1,000 times each. 
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I have posted this on the forum a few times. But maybe the stock price is a reflection customer dissatisfaction? I’m a long time Cambium/Canopy/Motorola/Cyclone etc user, but recently I’ve started to worry about investing more into new products with the dwindling stock.
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Assuming my other post will get deleted lol. But seriously, They have to see how much interest there is in this. Make it so! <----- Updated for you @Riverrat
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I’ve been thinking the same. I am really shocked that they completely abandoned their nlos customers with no where to go. Feels like Ubiquiti in 2014. Only problem is that it seem all vendors, the entire industry has abandoned nlos, which many of the small wisps rely on.
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We have way more 2.4 still going than I care to have, with most being very poor connections. A 2.4 AX solution would definitely change that!
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