Rural favorite LTE fixed wireless broadband — soon-to-be 5G —is forecast to grow 26% through 2022
The global fixed wireless broadband market will grow 30% in 2018 and generate $18 billion in service revenue, forecasts market analysis firm ABI Research. By 2022, worldwide fixed wireless broadband market are expected to generate $45.2 billion, thanks to an estimated compound annual growth rate of 26%.
Fixed wireless broadband delivers broadband via radio signals rather than cables to deliver broadband internet to customers, who have an outdoor antenna receiver mounted to the building and a Wi-Fi gateway inside. The connection is line-of-sight between the customer premises and a ground station.
Often fixed broadband options — DSL, cable or fiber alternatives — are limited in rural areas, explains network infrastructure company Ericsson in a blog. “Fixed wireless access (FWA) provides a bridge to those potential customers,” Ericsson said.
As RCR Wireless News reported in March, lots of small, rural carriers are working to extend reliable broadband in challenging economic and geographical settings.
For now, LTE is the most widely used technology to provide fixed wireless broadband service across the world, reports ABI Research. Verizon will launch its 5G fixed wireless in California this year and expects 30 million customers to be reached by that first deployment. AT&T and Charter are carrying out 5G fixed wireless broadband tests in select U.S. markets. Orange, Elisa, and telecom infrastructure company Arqiva are performing 5G fixed wireless trials in Europe. In APAC, Australia’s Optus is planning for 5G fixed wireless service launch in 2019, , according to ABI Research.
“5G fixed broadband access is expected to enable robust services with a reliable capacity to meet the need of residential broadband users,” said ABI Research Industry Analyst Khin Sandi Lynn in a statement. “5G technology can support a theoretical speed up to 20 Gbps with latency [of] 1 ms, enabling operators to provide superior broadband access without installing fiber-optic cables to every single household,”
These findings are from ABI Research’s LTE and 5G Fixed Broadband Markets report, which lists 43 operators providing fixed wireless broadband access including AT&T, Bell, Orange, Telefonica, Verizon, etc. and customer premises equipment vendors including Arris, Huawei, Netgear, Sagemcom, Technicolor, ZyXel, ZTE, among others.
