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There are millions of people in the US without a reliable traditional land-based ISP. Those that do can often have super slow DSL or a few 5G options that are all slower than you’d want. There’s also satellite options, but those aren’t always reliable either.
Plus, what if you’re a small business, or you work from home and need an always-on and reliable connection?
Waveform thinks they have the solution.
We’re great friends with the folks over at Waveform. They’re the experts when it comes to cell signals, and their antennas are some of the most popular choices for 5G Home Internet users.
Now, the company is branching out a bit by offering their own full-package internet service, and it’s got a few unique features that most other ISPs don’t have.
5G Internet From The Antenna Pros
Waveform Internet is an all-in-one solution that has the ability to bind multiple carrier connections into one. This is ideal for areas where you might not have a great connection from any single carrier, but by combining them together, you get a much better connection.
The main focus here is reliability. Combining two carriers (or more) isn’t necessarily designed to increase speeds. In fact, when aggregating carriers using Waveform’s equipment, you’ll top out at a maximum of around 150Mbps, which is about the best you can get without the service costing a whole lot more. That being said, if your internet connections max out at much less than that, you could actually see a speed increase by bonding. Either way, your connection stability will be top notch.
Using bonding keeps tasks that need a consistent quality connection, like video calls, gaming VoIP, or even live streaming, more stable. That makes it ideal for everyone from business executives working remotely, to small businesses that need an always-on reliable connection, to rural home users that just want something to actually work for once.
How connection aggregation works
The Waveform internet is provided via Peplink hardware, and uses Peplink SpeedFusion. This essentially combines multiple internet connections by tunneling to a SpeedFusion relay via those connections, and then returning as a single IP and data stream.
There are a few different options when using bonding. For most people, the ideal option is “smart bonding“. Essentially, with smart bonding, only traffic that needs stable connections, like the previously mentioned video calls and such, are bonded. This allows that traffic to be stable and reliable, because traffic over that bonded connection will maintain a persistent IP address and a persistent connection to your connected service (like Zoom) even if one of your internet connections themselves drops.
Meanwhile, your other internet usage, such as downloads and basic web browsing, are directly connected via the fastest of your internet connections. That gives you the best of both worlds.
Then there’s “always bonded“. As you can probably guess, this sends all traffic over the bonded network. That will limit you to a maximum of 150mbps, but you’ll ensure that you will pretty much never have an internet outage because all of your traffic flows simultaneously and dynamically via multiple ISP connections.
Waveform internet supports up to 2 additional WAN connections, too—one on the core router and one on the add-on modem. This means, if you need a really really reliable connection, you could combine a fiber connection and a cable ISP connection (or any other wired ISP connection) with the two included 5G connections. All of these would be connected together for the bonded traffic via SpeedFusion, and if any combination of those 4 connections gets flaky or goes down, your essential connections stay active.
The Hardware
As mentioned, Waveform Internet runs on dedicated enterprise-grade Peplink hardware. This includes the core Peplink B One 5G router and an add-on Peplink BR1 Mini 5G.
The core router acts as your main hub, and connects to the fastest available carrier at your location. It provides 4 gigabit ethernet LAN ports and dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi. The add-on 5G device then adds an additional 5G modem to provide a secondary 5G connection to the next-fastest carrier available to you.
The kit includes everything you need to get up and running.
Top-tier support
One of the biggest things Waveform is known for is their excellent customer service.
That is especially true with Waveform Internet. When you sign up, Waveform works with you to pre-configure everything exactly how you want it. After that, if you have any changes that need done, you simply contact Waveform and they’ll make the change from their end.
They also monitor your connection 24/7 for issues, and can seamlessly fix issues before you might even notice them. For example if one of your 5G connections begins to fluctuate and another carrier becomes faster as a result, Waveform can switch your primary unbonded connection to that other carrier seamlessly.
This is, for now, almost to a fault. Even things like port forwarding or changing your WiFi password requires contacting the company so they can change it. That being said, this is fully in “early access” territory, and Waveform does say that they’re working to open things up for customers to make some of these changes on their own in the future.
Pricing
Waveform Internet comes in three different flavors: Essential, which is unlimited data on your primary 5G connection and 10GB of backup internet on the second 5G connection, Smart, which includes unlimited data on both connections and includes smart bonding, and finally Complete, which is designed for absolute maximum uptime and allows for an always bonded connection.
After choosing a plan, you’ll then decide how to pay for the hardware. Waveform offers a 1-year installment of $74 per month or an upfront cost of $849.99. After that, you own it.
In addition to the mainline internet offerings, the company also has a “backup” internet service. That starts at $65/mo for 10GB of data (meant to be used exclusively as a backup), and only includes the main core router for hardware. You can find out more about that specific service here.
Is it right for you?
Now, you might say this is pretty expensive. After all, T-Mobile for example offers 5G internet for about $50. So why bother?
For some people, that would be plenty! But for many others, reliability can be a nightmare, especially with cellular.
Someone living in a rural area that gets 5mbps DSL and 20mbps 5G (but only sometimes) is going to be spending more time troubleshooting their connection than actually using it. Waveform sets up everything up front, and manages everything behind the scenes. That means you just have working internet, and you don’t have to worry about where it’s coming from.
Reliability is the name of the game here. If you regularly have situations where you absolutely cannot lose connection, like an important business meeting for example, having a reliable multi-WAN connection that self-heals and manages itself if something goes wrong is worth its weight in gold. You won’t get that reliability with a single ISP.
Whether or not Waveform Internet is right for you will depend on your situation. Obviously, for many people, a single ISP is good enough, especially if you have reliable high-speed fiber or cable. But if you’re in an area with poor connection options, or need super high reliability, Waveform Internet may be for you.
To find out more and apply for early access, you can check out Waveform’s site using the button below.
