TECHNICAL ARTICLE

Business Backhaul in the Levante

How to connect your sites with high-capacity links across Alicante, Murcia and the whole Mediterranean seaboard. Dedicated fibre, licensed radio links and Starlink Business unified under a single network.

Backhaul is the backbone of any company with multiple sites. It is the high-capacity link connecting your offices, units, warehouses and branches to each other and to the internet. If the backhaul fails, every site is cut off.

In the Spanish Levante — Alicante, Murcia, Valencia — the geography is a challenge: mountain ranges, dry riverbeds, rural areas the operators do not reach. But it is also an opportunity: the right combination of technologies makes it possible to connect any location. At DDR360 we do it every day.

🔗 DDR360: Business backhaul across Alicante, Murcia and the Levante

We deploy capacity links using dedicated fibre, licensed radio links and Starlink Business. All unified with MikroWizard. Without depending on a single technology or a single operator.

The Three Business Backhaul Technologies

Point-to-Point Dedicated Fibre

The highest-performing option. An exclusive single-mode fibre optic circuit between two locations. 100 Gbps symmetric, latency under one millisecond, 99.99% SLA. Thanks to agreements with local operators, we deploy dedicated fibre even where the large operators say there is no coverage. Ideal for connecting head office to a data centre, or two corporate buildings to each other.

Licensed Radio Link

When cable cannot be laid — a road, a river, a mountain range — the radio link is the answer. We use frequencies licensed by the CNMC, not unlicensed WiFi. That means zero interference and maximum stability. Distances of up to 50 kilometres, speeds of up to 10 Gbps. Ideal for connecting a production unit on a distant industrial estate, or two sites separated by undeveloped land.

Starlink Business + Public IP

For locations where neither fibre nor a radio link is viable — a temporary construction site, a campsite, a winery out in the country — Starlink Business with our fixed public IP via MikroWizard is the answer. Up to 350 Mbps, latency of 25-50 ms, professional installation with IP67-sealed cabling. Ideal as critical fibre backup or as the main connection in genuinely remote areas.

The Real Technical Differences Between the Three Technologies

Comparing these three technologies on maximum speed alone is a common mistake. What determines whether a backhaul is reliable for business use is a combination of latency, stability (jitter and packet loss), and how the link behaves when things go wrong:

Parameter Dedicated fibre Licensed radio Starlink Business
Typical latency<1 ms1-5 ms25-50 ms
Physical requirementAn existing trench route or ductingDirect line of sight (unobstructed) between mastsClear view of the sky, with no installation between points
Weather sensitivityPractically noneHeavy rain on high bands (e.g. E-band) reduces link marginVery heavy rain can cause brief attenuation
Deployment timeWeeks to months (civil works)Days to weeks (masts and licence)Hours to a day
Inherent redundancyNone without a second routeVulnerable to failure of the mast or the equipmentA satellite constellation, with no single point of failure on the ground

The direct line of sight that a radio link requires deserves explanation: it is not enough for two masts to be a reasonable distance apart — there must be a clear path between the two antennas with no trees, buildings or terrain cutting across it. You also have to respect what is known as the Fresnel zone, an ellipsoidal volume around the straight line which must likewise be free of obstacles, or the signal degrades even though direct line of sight technically exists. In hilly terrain, as much of inland Alicante and Murcia is, this sometimes means raising the antennas on tall masts or using intermediate relay points.

Weather sensitivity also varies with the frequency band used on the radio link: higher frequencies (such as E-band, around 70-80 GHz, which offers more capacity) are more susceptible to attenuation from heavy rain than lower bands. In the Spanish Levante, where torrential rain events (the DANA or 'gota fría') are more frequent than inland, this factor forms part of the link margin calculation we carry out before proposing a particular band. Sea salt at coastal installations is another consideration: it demands equipment with reinforced IP protection and more frequent maintenance inspections than inland.

When to Use Each Technology

The decision is not a matter of preference but of fit against three variables: distance between sites, available budget and ground conditions.

MikroWizard: The Glue That Holds It All Together

The real value lies not in each individual link, but in how they are unified. MikroWizard is our platform, turning three different technologies into a single private corporate network. It makes no difference whether head office uses dedicated fibre, the production unit a radio link and the temporary site Starlink: every location sees the others as though they were in the same building. With fixed public IPs, VPN tunnels, 24/7 monitoring and automatic failover.

How Much Does a Backhaul Link Cost?

It depends on the distance, the technology and the capacity required. As a guide:

Every case is unique. Ask us for a free feasibility survey and we will provide a fixed quotation within 48 hours.

What a LIR Is, and Why Owning Your IPs Matters

When a company buys connectivity from a conventional operator, that operator assigns it a public IP address from its own range. That IP is not yours: it belongs to the operator, and if at any point you change provider — or add a second provider for redundancy — you lose that IP and have to reconfigure firewalls, client VPNs, whitelists and DNS records. For a company with a single site and one connection, this is a minor nuisance. For a multi-site company that depends on stable remote access, it is a recurring problem.

A LIR (Local Internet Registry) is an entity registered with RIPE NCC, the regional registry that administers the allocation of IP addresses and autonomous system numbers (ASNs) in Europe. Being a LIR allows an organisation to obtain its own block of IP addresses and its own ASN, and to announce them using the routing protocol BGP through one or more transit operators.

The practical consequence is that those IP addresses are no longer tied to any particular operator: they are portable. The company can buy transit from operator A, switch to operator B, or keep both simultaneously for redundancy (known as multihoming), and its public IP addresses stay exactly the same in every case. Nothing that depends on that IP — client VPN access, integrations billed against a fixed IP, third-party firewall rules — breaks when you change connectivity provider.

For most small businesses with a single site, this level of infrastructure is unnecessary: the cost and complexity of managing your own IP ranges do not pay off. Where it does make sense is in companies with several sites connected by different backhaul technologies (fibre at one, radio at another, Starlink at a third) that want to treat them as a single logical network with consistent IPs regardless of the underlying physical link. That is exactly the scenario we solve by combining backhaul deployment with MikroWizard's network layer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to be a LIR if I only have one site?

In most cases, no. Being a LIR makes sense when you manage several sites with different connectivity providers and want your IP addresses not to depend on any one of them. With a single site, the fixed public IP your operator provides — or the one we assign via MikroWizard over Starlink — is usually enough.

Can I combine fibre and Starlink as automatic redundancy?

Yes, it is one of the configurations we most often recommend at critical sites. The primary link (fibre or radio) handles normal traffic, and a failover-capable router switches automatically to Starlink Business if it detects the primary link going down. The switch takes seconds, not minutes, and reverts on its own once the primary link recovers.

What SLA is it realistic to expect from each technology?

Point-to-point dedicated fibre offers the highest SLAs on the market, around 99.99% availability, because the circuit is exclusive and not shared with other traffic. A licensed radio link, properly designed with margin against rain, approaches those levels but depends on the electrical and physical availability of the masts. Starlink Business, relying on a shared satellite constellation, offers very good availability but not a contractual SLA comparable to a dedicated circuit — which is why we recommend it as backup, or as the primary link only where there is no alternative.

Does wind affect a radio link?

It can if the mast or tower is not properly braced: a shift of a few degrees in the antenna, however slight it may seem, can take it out of the receiving antenna's beam on long-distance links with high-gain antennas. That is why the structural calculation of the support matters as much as the radio itself: state-of-the-art equipment is worthless on a mast that moves in the wind.

How long does each technology take to deploy?

Starlink Business is the fastest, operational the same day. A licensed radio link requires obtaining a frequency licence from the CNMC and erecting masts, which usually takes from days to a few weeks depending on site availability. Dedicated fibre takes longest when new civil works are involved — weeks to months — although if ducting already exists nearby the timescale shortens considerably.

Need to connect several locations across the Levante?

Request a free feasibility survey. We assess your sites and recommend the best technology for each link, with no commercial bias.

Request a survey →

Further reading: DDR360 Capacity & Backhaul · Starlink for Business · Starlink Guide · Hikvision CCTV