A Wireless Bridge Between Buildings, Not a Trench
A garage, a barn, a second unit, a building across the lot. Same network, no trench.
Distance, mounting difficulty and whether the two points can actually see each other. Private cellular across a large property sits well above this range.
Typical range, not a quote. Your price comes from the free estimate.
The problem
You need real network in a second building. The quotes to trench a cable across the property came back somewhere between eye-watering and absurd, and that is before anyone mentions the driveway you would have to cut through and repave. So the outbuilding limps along on a WiFi extender that drops every afternoon, or on nothing at all.
Why it matters
If the two buildings can see each other, you almost certainly do not need a trench. A wireless bridge between buildings is a pair of small directional radios, one aimed at the other, carrying a full-speed connection across the gap for a fraction of what digging costs, and it can be up the same day. This is genuinely the same technology used to connect construction camps and quarries across kilometers of open ground, just at shorter range and lower cost. The reason so many do-it-yourself links disappoint is not the hardware, it is that nobody did the arithmetic first. Every link has a budget: how much signal leaves one end, how much of it the distance, the weather and anything in the path take away, and how much has to still be arriving at the far end for the connection to hold. Get that sum wrong and the link is beautiful on a clear day in February and dead in the first heavy rain, or fine all winter and stuttering in April when the trees between the two buildings leaf out and start holding water. We work that budget out before we quote, with margin left in it for rain and for the path as it will look in July rather than as it looks the morning we visit. If the numbers do not leave enough room, we tell you that instead of selling you the radios. Over a bigger property, or where there is no clean line of sight, private cellular coverage does the same job in a different way: your own private cell signal across the whole site, which phones, tablets and equipment connect to like any other network but which belongs entirely to you.
Scope
What we actually do
- 01A line of sight check first, because it either works or it does not and you should know before you spend anything
- 02The arithmetic done before we quote: how much signal leaves one end, how much the distance and the weather take away, and how much has to still arrive at the other end for the link to hold
- 03A wireless bridge between buildings, working across a driveway or across several miles, carrying everything a buried cable would have
- 04Full-speed connections that carry cameras, phones and everything else, not just basic browsing
- 05Weatherproof mounting and proper grounding, so the first thunderstorm is not also the last day it works
- 06Private cellular coverage across large properties where line of sight is broken or there are too many buildings to link individually
- 07Margin designed in for heavy rain, wind and for the path as it looks in summer, because a link sized for a clear day in February is the one that quits in April when the trees fill in
- 08A written record of the numbers we designed to, so if the link ever does struggle there is something to compare against instead of a guess
The far building is simply on your network at full speed, with nothing dug up and no monthly fee for the link.
Questions
Questions people actually ask
What if the two buildings cannot see each other?
Sometimes we can bounce via a third point such as a roof or a pole. If not, private cellular or a buried cable become the honest options, and we will tell you that rather than sell you a link that will disappoint.
Does weather break it?
A properly designed link has enough margin to ride out heavy rain. Links fail in weather when someone specified them with no headroom to save a few hundred dollars. The seasonal one people miss is foliage: bare branches barely touch the signal, the same branches in leaf hold water and absorb it, so a link that was set up in winter has to be sized for the summer path rather than the one you can see through today.
How far can it go?
A wireless bridge between buildings works from across a driveway up to several miles with clear line of sight. Most of what we do around Northern Virginia and Maryland is well under a mile, which is comfortably within range.
Also under connectivity that works
Get a free estimate
We come out, look at the place, and give you a real number in writing.
Equipment we work with: Ubiquiti airMAX and airFiber for point to point links, plus CBRS private LTE and 5G where a licensed private cellular network is the better fit.