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With smartphones now ubiquitous and a wide range of productivity applications growing increasingly popular, wireless carriers are facing an enormous backhaul challenge as they attempt to meet the new requirements of “4G” technologies. Traditional, copper-based networks aren’t equipped to meet the demand, and deploying new fiber networks to support “4G” capabilities is costly and time consuming. As a result, many wireless carriers are scrambling to find alternative fiber-to-the-tower options and Wi-Fi offload networking options.
Although the backhaul dilemma poses serious cost containment and service quality obstacles for the wireless providers, it offers a potentially lucrative revenue opportunity for cable and utility network providers. Take the Cable WiFi Alliance, for example. The organization, which includes member companies Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Bright House Networks, recently announced that it has exceeded more than 150,000 hotspots in major metropolitan areas. And according to Heavy Reading, the Cable WiFi Alliance is expected to reach more than 250,000 hotspots by the end of 2014.
The primary purpose of this initiative is to expand the reach of cable operators’ services and provide a competitive answer to over-the-top offerings. However, the Cable WiFi Alliance potentially provides a dense Wi-Fi offload capability that can meet growing “4G” demand, which is expected to increase approximately 17% annually for the foreseeable future according to 4G Americas. The cable industry can also leverage their investment in fiber/coax networks to offer broadband capacity to towers within their service areas.
Meanwhile, utility service providers are already leveraging their fiber assets to support the backhaul capacity crunch. In some regards, the ability of the utility networks to provide a dark fiber option may represent a different value proposition to the wireless carriers. For example, dark fiber assets are likely to be cheaper than lit fiber alternatives, and they allow wireless carriers to increase capacity without incurring additional costs. Although the wireless operator may have to invest capital in procuring the necessary fiber terminal and routing equipment, dark fiber assets can also offer a lower operating expense.
The added bonus for utilities is that they have another potential customer in emerging specialized wireless backhaul providers, which are acquiring utility dark fiber assets to provide Ethernet/MPLS solutions to the wireless industry.
These developments indicate that cable and utility network providers are moving away from the old opportunistic approach of providing service only when a tower happened to be close to existing network assets, and moving towards a more targeted approach that is much more demand aware. As they enter this new territory, however, cable and utility operators will need to develop analytic capabilities that can integrate wireless service provider tower demand projections to build better forecast models and create more proactive provisioning capabilities that enable faster backhaul deployment. By doing so, backhaul demand should continue to provide a stable revenue opportunity for cable and utility network providers.
Jose Marques is Director of Telecom Solutions for Teradata. Jose has spent more than 30 years in the Telecom industry in a variety of technology and commercial management positions. Marques has extensive experience in wireless, wireless and cable networking technology and has worked in service provider environments around the world. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from New Jersey Institute of Techn
