Login Have you ever been wondering, what the login facility on the Airwire website is all about ? It's the door to our support tracking and billing system. If you are a customer of ours and have provided us with your email-address, you can contact us to get access to your statement, invoices etc. In time it'll also be possible to track support queries.

Technology

Airwire is running MPLS across a hybrid network, employing various technologies depending on availability, location and suitability. This allows for very low latency, consistent throughput and allows us to offer hosted layer2 connectivity anywhere within the core network. We have dedicated basestation gear to offer hosted MPLS to customers. Our network has been dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 since 2008, offering IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity simultaneously to both business customers and consumers.

Our topology allows that we can scale the network to deliver any amount of bandwidth, if requested by the customer.

 

Hybrid Broadband

What is Hybrid Broadband?

There is a lot of confusion about broadband and how it is delivered. Hybrid broadband is a fibre backed fixed wireless broadband solution, where we bring fibre as near as possible to our customers, back it up with high capacity radio links between towers and repeaters and finally bridge the gap using modern broadband radio equipment to provide speeds comparable to FTTH (Fibre to the Home). You could call it FTTT (Fibre to the Tower).

The key difference between our broadband and mobile systems is, that we mount a fixed antenna on the customers premises, that is optimized by our engineer during the installation to ensure customers get the best broadband speed and quality. We also operate at much lower and safer power levels than 4G and 5G, which is why it is important that a trained engineer installs our equipment.

This enables us to provide a service at speeds comparable to other fibre backed solutions, but with greater reliability and a faster rollout. Systems that only employ copper or fibre to the premises can suffer from outages caused by storm damage. Because we have the redundancy built in using radio technology, there is a greater chance, that our systems stay online. A tree lands on a copper or fibre line, it is bound to get damaged. A tree falls on a "wireless line", the service is unaffected. Unless the tree knocks out the radio gear, of course. But that is a scenario, that is much easier and quicker to remedy, than to replace an entire run of copper or fibre.

 

Coverage

Hybrid Broadband (Fibre to the Tower): most of Co. Galway, the north of Co. Clare, the south of Co. Mayo, parts of Co. Roscommon and Co. Westmeath using over 70 repeater or tower sites.

OpenEIR VDSL and FTTH (Fibre to the Cabinet) and (Fibre to the Home): nationwide, with interconnects in 5 geographically diverse locations.

SIRO FTTH (Fibre to the Home): Athlone, Ballinasloe, Blessington, Castleconnell, Clarecastle, Ennis, Galway, Limerick, Loughrea, Monasterevin, Nenagh, Oranmore, Portlaoise, Roscommon, Roscrea, Shannon, Sixmilebridge, Sligo, South Dublin (Carrickmines, Leopardstown, Newcastle, Saggart, Stepaside, Stillorgan) and Tullamore.

 

Partners

We have partnered up with key players in the industry to deliver the best quality broadband possible.

AVM - Customer router and phone devices

BT Ireland - Backbone across Ireland and data centre services in Dublin

CenturyLink - IP infrastructure

Ceragon - Network infrastructure

Cisco - Network infrastructure and business grade phone infrastructure

Cogent - IP infrastructure

ESB Telecoms - Backbone and dark fibre across Ireland

enet - Metro dark fibre in Athlone, Galway and Sligo

INEX - IP infrastructure

Intellicom - Phone infrastructure

Mikrotik - WCDMA fixed wireless systems, network infrastructure and customer router devices

Mimosa - Network infrastructure

Netonix - Hardened network infrastructure

NTT Communications - IP infrastructure

OpenEIR - NGN, FTTH and VDSL distribution infrastructure

Radwin - Next generation fixed wireless systems

SAF - Network infrastructure

SIAE Microelettronica - Network infrastructure

SIRO - FTTH distribution infrastructure

Ubiquiti - FTTH and high capacity radio infrastructure

Viatel - IP infrastructure

 

About Us

Airwire was established in the start of 2006 by Ciaran Maddison and Martin List-Petersen. Our aim was to provide broadband to areas in the west of Ireland where nothing else was available. We had been providing ourselves with broadband as there was no other option and saw the need among friends and neighbours - especially those who wanted to work from home or operate a business in rural Ireland.

What started out as a fairly small provider in the Kinvara region covers now most of Co. Galway, the north of Co. Clare, the south of Co. Mayo, parts of Co. Roscommon and Co. Westmeath, offering Fixed Wireless, VDSL copper based broadband and Fibre to the Home (FTTH). Additionally we provide Fibre to the Home in xAthlone, Ballinasloe, Blessington, Castleconnell, Clarecastle, Ennis, Galway, Limerick, Loughrea, Monasterevin, Nenagh, Oranmore, Portlaoise, Roscommon, Roscrea, Shannon, Sixmilebridge, Sligo, South Dublin (Carrickmines, Leopardstown, Newcastle, Saggart, Stepaside, Stillorgan) and Tullamore on SIROs platform and VDSL and FTTH services on OpenEIRs platform nationwide. As soon as 2009 Airwire had approx. 2000 users with fixed wireless broadband in the ISM band (as specified by Comreg and the European regulation body). We've enabled a few estates with pre-wired ethernet based services and we operate our own dark fibre in Galway, Athlone, Sligo and Portlaoise. As of 2016, we've also partnered up with OpenEIR and SIRO and use them as last mile option, to get high speed broadband to our customers on VDSL and FTTH. (Fibre to the Cabinet and Fibre to the Home). These connections then are handed off to us as local as possible and carried to the Internet using our own network. The company currently consists of 9 employees and some freelance co-workers.

The entire infrastructure, that the network of Airwire consists of, has been build from scratch and is owned by Airwire. Our connection to the outside world is provided by multiple carriers on a fibre ring, that connects Dublin, Portlaoise, Limerick, Ennis, Galway, Sligo and Athlone. This fibre ring is also backed up using licensed radio links of our own, where possible. Essentially, our set-up means we are not dependant on one carrier or location.

The first 2 1/2 years of Airwire's existance, we had no physical office, but still today, our network and the internet are our virtual office. Today, we operate small data center in the heart of Galway City and our staff works out of our offices in Kinvara and Athlone.

The team behind Airwire has over 20 years experience in wide area networking and telecoms infrastructure. We've been actively deploying wireless systems in Ireland since 2004 and abroad before that. Our core network is consistently upgraded as our customer base and demand increases. (In fact, the demand for broadband in rural Ireland has been so great that by the time you read this, these figures will probably be out of date!)

Ultimately, Airwire strives to provide a broadband service that meets the needs of our customers. We believe that those of us living in rural areas should be able to access a broadband service that is as good as any available in urban areas. We have a good relationship with our customers and rely on customer feedback to help us continually improve our service.

Airwire originally started as a partnership between Ciaran Maddison and Martin List-Petersen in the start of 2006, but was incorporated as a Limited Company with the CRO under number 508961 in 2012. Our office is registered at the address Moy, Kinvara, Co. Galway. We are registered with Comreg, the Data Protection Commisioner and are a Local Internet Registry under RIPE.

 

The Website

Our logo design was done by Jeremy Green. who operates out of the rural parts of Co. Galway.

The webdesign of this website was done for us by Peacock Design.

It is customers like these - businesses and professionals - who need broadband to do their job and that's exactly why Airwire began.

Some of the pictures on this website come from a professional photo library, others are taken by Keith Larkin and Martin List-Petersen from across the areas that we work in every day. The shot on this page, for example, was taken by Martin from Maghera in Co. Clare at 210m above sealevel. The spot has a beautiful view over Lough Cutra and into Co. Galway. On a bright day, the view would even extend into Co. Mayo.

 

"Ag Nascadh Pobail an Iarthair"

"Ag Nascadh Pobail an Iarthair" translates to "Connecting the Western Community" in English. This is our aim and our network provides coverage across many Gaeltacht regions, where people speak Irish natively.