Frequently Asked Questions
Our team at Mage is excited to provide reliable high-speed Internet service to rural and remote areas. However, deploying a new technology comes with many questions. We have compiled our most frequently asked questions below. If you don’t see an answer to your question, please send us a note at info@mage-networks.com
Yes! Mage Networks is a Canadian company, with offices in Bragg Creek, Alberta and Calgary, Alberta.
Mage Networks connects people in rural and remote areas to reliable, high-speed Internet. MagiNet™ is a solution to a world problem – unreliable or inaccessible Internet developed in Alberta, Canada by the team here at Mage Networks. It’s formed by hardware and firmware designed by our team and seamlessly uses wireless and wired connections to create wireless coverage over, under, and around any sized area without degradation in speed or consistency.
We currently offer both download and upload speeds of 100 Mbps.
Our technology, MagiNet™ provides symmetrical speed. This means that the upload and download speeds have the same maximum limit. Mage doesn’t cut corners on bandwidth and we’re the only ISP that has implemented minimum bandwidth standards, including Guaranteed Minimum Bandwidth™ and Guaranteed Streaming Bandwidth™
At Mage, we have Guaranteed Streaming Bandwidth™, ensuring that our customers can always do more than surf the Internet, check email or scroll social media. Our GSB™ means that you will never have more than a certain number of customers sharing your bandwidth and that your speed will never drop below 7 Mbps.
How can we do this? The design of our 100 Mbps Data Pipeline will never have more than fourteen (14) customers on it. Second, we can easily increase the overall capacity of the entire network (or a branch of the network) using our concept of New Bandwidth Injection™ (NBI™). NBI™ injects additional bandwidth into the network to remove bottlenecks and increase overall capacity.
MagiNet™ is a network solution that expands the traditional point-to-point and point-to-multipoint networks to an every-point to every-point network. Unlike cellular towers, we use a series of interconnected nodes, instead of all units having to connect to one access point. We place as many nodes as needed wherever they are needed to bring Internet access directly to a specific area and guarantee no data rate loss. That means that even obstacles like trees or buildings – even the weather – do not impact the signal strength and you’ll have reliable high-speed Internet. In effect, the connection is made where it’s needed and not where it’s not needed.
To learn more about our packages and availability, you can find information here: https://mage-networks.com/internet/
Our network is a combination of fiber and our own technology, MagiNet™ Therefore, our Internet service isn’t based on a tower or cellular service.
MagiNet™ is formed by hardware and firmware designed by our team and seamlessly uses wireless and wired connections to create wireless coverage over, under, and around any sized area without degradation in speed or consistency. Our network (MagiNet™) doesn’t rely on towers or satellites. Unlike other service providers, we can go through and around trees, valleys, and difficult terrain to deliver high-speed broadband anywhere. We use data pipelines in a series of small hops where the locations are strategically selected to distribute the data from central locations. Those data pipelines carry multiple signals in multiple directions, intelligently choosing whichever routes will avoid obstacles and interference with other data pipelines. The data automatically zips on and off wired and wireless connections to maximize efficiency.
Ultimately, our technology MagiNet™ directly connects any home and business in an area that wants our Internet service.
The question of health effects on people as a result of the Electro-Magnetic (EM) waves used in communications systems (such as Wi-Fi, 4G, LTE, and 5G) is an important one. As such, we’ve been asked specifically about the effect of MagiNet™ on one’s health.
Here’s some information to consider:
Some studies have shown that there is a link between high levels of EM exposure and cancer in male rats. The same study shows that for female rats and mice (both female and male) the evidence is unclear. The same study also shows that life expectancy for the male rats exposed is higher than that of the control group.
The study exposed the rats and mice to high levels of radiation for far longer than any human would be exposed to (9 hours per day, at 1 to 4 times the maximum allowed level from cell phones).
Power levels decline rapidly with distance. The most significant impact comes from devices closest to a person. For example, a cell phone is constantly trying to reach the tower to tell it where it is. This transmitted power is much higher than the received power from the tower and is closest to you. The transmitted power varies with the distance between the cell phone and the cell tower. However, even then the power emitted from phones very low compared to sunlight which can put up to 1000 watts (10,000 times more than a cell phone) on your body when you walk outdoors. The power from just the Ultra-Violet (UV) rays from the sun is 30 watt and our bodies have evolved to deal with these kinds of heating effects. The EM waves from communications devices are millions of times lower than naturally occurring ones.
Electromagnetic waves of some high frequencies such as Ultraviolet, X-Rays and Gamma do have serious effects (though moderate amounts of these ultra high frequencies are beneficial: UV helps metabolise Vitamin D for strong bones, X-Rays are used for medical diagnostics all the time and Gamma rays are used in radiation therapy to kill cancer cells.) Even still, Ultraviolet is 100,000 to 10 million times higher frequency than what MagiNet™ uses; X-Rays are 10 Million to 10 Billion times higher and Gamma Rays are even higher.
With MagiNet™ we place the units outside the home, they beam away from the building and we mount them in shields so the leakage into the house is much lower than what is emitted by the devices already in the house. Additionally, the exterior walls or roof decreases the incoming radiation and the use of directional antennas ensures that beams are focused and don’t spread out everywhere.
Sources: https://www.emfscientist.org/
MagiNet™ works by bringing the Internet to your home wirelessly. We install a small antenna (not much bigger than a smartphone) on the exterior of your home. This connects to our network in the community. From the antenna installed on your home, we run an ethernet cable to a Wi-Fi router or directly to your computer.
We can run the ethernet cable nearly anywhere in your home, our equipment needs access to an outlet for power.
Yes.
You may use your own router, both wired and wireless.
You also have the option to directly connect your computer to the ethernet cable we provide. However, this limits the number of devices you can connect.
TP-Link Archer A6 1200 is our recommended router. You can either rent one through us (we take care of installation, configuration, maintenance, debugging and monitoring) or you can purchase one on your own, unsupported.
The actual installation time can vary based on the type of residence. However, average installation time once our installer is on-site is approximately two hours.
Yes. MagiNet™ is well suited to this application.
Absolutely. We recently completed a test in a heavily treed area with great success. Our system works well in trees because the units are kept relatively close to one another, and we have options to go through, around, and under trees to avoid being affected by blocking of leaves and foliage. See our recent blog regarding a treed area.
No.
3G, 4G and 5G are used by cell phones, whereas MagiNet™ uses Wi-Fi frequencies for the bases of the network.
We use the 2.4 GHz unlicensed band to provide access points for wireless devices and the 5 GHz and 60 GHz unlicensed bands to communicate between our nodes.
We’ve done our best to simplify our Terms and Conditions so that you don’t need a law degree to understand them. You can find them here: https://mage-networks.com/conditions/
We are regulated and licensed by the CRTC. Additionally, we meet the internet code which was applied to the Big 10 back in January (however, we do so voluntarily.) Here’s more information about the Internet Code and its applications: https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/internet/code.htm
A DPRL is a connection point in the network. It could be on a roof of a home, an outbuilding, or other infrastructure on the property, such as a pole. DPRLs are an important part of the network connecting homes that are typically otherwise unreachable.
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