goTenna Mesh

The goTenna Mesh was the first major evolutionary product from the debut goTenna V1 model which operated on the US-only MURS bands. We had gone with the non-mesh MURS product for our debut primarily because we believed that it would have longer range due to its higher power and lower frequency. Also, as a first-time hardware product company we had to try to find the minimum viable product in terms of complexity and capital expenses - although even with this conservative approach we still had close brushes with failure due to the sheer difficulty associated with hardware entrepreneurship.

Although the V1 MURS product was a success, we were only able to sell it within the US and we couldn’t mesh network due to FCC regulations. So it was back to regulatory research to find what bands might allow us to do more, not only in the US, but also open up into international markets. During this process, I found that the 900Mhz ISM bands were ideal, not only because they had US spectrum that allowed meshing, but there was also a similar band in the 844Mhz region in the EU that would allow us to sell in that major market without having to rev new hardware.

An added benefit was that this band had significantly more off-the-shelf components supporting it, allowing us to reduce our bill of material costs, reduce fabrication complexity, while also reusing many of the same core processing units that allowed us to preserve much of the foundational code and create a much more stable product in a shorter period of time.

The goTenna Mesh debuted in mid-2016, about a year and a half after the V1 product, and was met with widespread critical acclaim. It turned out to be smaller, lighter, cheaper, and to our own surprise, often much more capable than the higher power and lower frequency V1 product. This allowed us to retire the V1 and focus our efforts solely on the goTenna Mesh for the consumer market.

You can learn more and pick up your own Mesh units at www.gotennamesh.com.