Our recent disaster here in Texas with Winter Weather has given us the opportunity to capitalize on the need for continuity of government operations. While some of that may be achieved through hardware upgrades in facilities, some of it needs to be handled as adding network resilience in remote locations (homes) of our essential personnel. We deployed several PERC units built by Comprehensive Communicaiton Solutions https://www.comprehensivecom.net/perc/ and they worked, but we realized we need a smaller more semi-permanent and aesthetically pleasing unit for deployment.
I would like to propose that Peplink create a product that is similar to the MAX BR1 PRO with Band 14 connectivity support on the FirstNet service in a product that fits within the decorative environment of our elected officials. Essentially something that looks great for in home use. What I would like to do is be able to hand them a product to take home, plug into their LAN port on their home router and have FirstNet operational as well with SpeedFusion.
We are also working on power support for these “Continuity of Government Operations” and I would like to see simple Wall-Wart type power supply used as main power and support a secondary DC source for emergency add on. The device should have in my mind the following capabilities:
Gigabit WAN Interface
Gigabit LAN Interface x4
POE LAN for Cisco type phones
802.11 Wi-Fi (latest standards)
LTE-5G Support and be FirstNet Certified
Small Form Factor with integrated antennas similar to many home network routers
Support high speed throughputs for VPN capability, phone support, Wi-Fi calling, Zoom/Teams/WebEx meetings
Dual Power capable (Wall-Wart DC supply for normal operations, DC input for backup power supply).
I believe this product would be a great asset to your portfolio and would help not only government but also the corporate executive world as well. If priced right it could be used by education, health, or even RVers.
MSRP: Fully outfitted I would say it could be sold in the $500-700 range very well. Perhaps offer a non-speedfusion version at a price that you would charge for the license separately on other small devices.
Add-on accessories for those that want to do more, such as upgraded cellular antennas, a POE brick instead of a light duty version since not everyone needs POE. Mesh support for adding additional APs (decorative versions).
Most of our elected officials do not have FirstNet devices nor do they have agency provided devices currently. They prefer to have selection of their phones and receive a stipend only. Otherwise they would fall under county control of devices and security requirements. Also, they can not connect an enterprise phone up to a FirstNet cell phone, printers, and other hardware is also more difficult. Yes, we could use FirstNet hotspots, but I am trying to build redundancy and dual connections terrestrial Internet and FirstNet are my preference.
@EM724 I think your closest option would be to use a Balance20x with the EXM-MINI-1LTEA-R expansion module to get access to firstnet.
YES Gigabit WAN Interface
YES Gigabit LAN Interface x4
NO POE LAN for Cisco type phones
YES 802.11 Wi-Fi (latest standards)
Via expansion LTE-5G Support and be FirstNet Certified
NO internal antennas Small Form Factor with integrated antennas similar to many home network routers
YES Support high speed throughputs for VPN capability, phone support, Wi-Fi calling, Zoom/Teams/WebEx meetings
NO WAN Dual Power capable (Wall-Wart DC supply for normal operations, DC input for backup power supply).
I am pretty sure I tested the 20x with passive power on the WAN and it didn’t work
See my posting here on passive poe:
For dual power I’d use either a 12v UPS posted on this thread