I posted over in the ePMP forums about this but I thought maybe this might be a good/better place to ask.
We are looking at rolling out 30+ micropops (ePMP AP/Omni on a utility pole) in one town and having a 1 to 1 backhaul isn't an option due to not having enough room for them all and paying rent on 30+ radios/antennas would make the micropop solution unviable.
If we think of each micropop as a business customer it seems like I should just have to consider what speeds I'm offering / expecting to deliver to each micropop just like I would if for any other service. Are there any issues or problems that might be unique to this scenario ? Would a 450M be noticeably better solution than a 450 or 450i in this scenario ? Are there any other products out there that would work better for this ?
Assuming you have all the GPS locations of the poles, you should use LinkPlanner to enter in all of the locations, and the proposed location of the AP. Once you've done that, you can swap out AP's very quickly and see the differences in capacity and coverage for ePMP, PMP450m, and PMP450i. This will help you make the most informed buying decision.
These are going up as the need arises right now so no planned locations beyond the first 2 or 3.
Are you saying that, depending on location, an ePMP might out-perform a 450m ? While we are backhauling the few Microps we have right now to two ePMP APs I really assumed that the 450 would be better suited to the job. However it seems a lot of people are only getting marginally better performance out of 450/450i over the ePMP sectors so I thought that possibly the 450Ms might offer some kind of advantage.
If the 450/450M doesn't offer any real advantage over an ePMP then I'm going to need to figure out some other way to feed them withough having to string fiber to each one.