For years, fiber has been considered the gold standard for delivering fast broadband speeds to residential customers, particularly in areas where broadband subscriber density justified the cost. But other areas that fiber couldn’t reach remained mostly underserved, forcing service providers to look for alternative technologies that could offer multi-gigabit connectivity all the way to the home.
Indeed, while fiber has been around for a long time, it is not always the best choice when designing a network. Not only is deploying fiber costly, particularly in urban and suburban markets, but providers would be forced to wait quite a while before they could break even on their investment, regardless of the setting. In order to maintain a sustainable business model, operators have always had to balance the investment in time and resources with what their customers are willing to pay for their service levels.
But the one constant theme that defines the telecommunications business is change. And we’re starting to see a major change when it comes to the increased deployment of hybrid broadband networks that bring together fiber and fixed wireless technology. These deployments, consisting of a combination of fixed wireless and wired, are fast gaining momentum. This hybrid approach is poised to become the nation’s mainstream network architecture. Here’s why.
Let’s start with the obvious: time and money.
Subscribers want to know how quickly they can get service. However, if we’re talking about so-called “brownfield” deployments, where the installation and configuration of new hardware or software must coexist with legacy network infrastructure, that takes time because you need to trench new fiber in the ground. The fact is that customers aren’t going to wait years for wired networks.
Here’s where a hybrid network approach embraces the best of available technology to overcome that obstacle. Pure fixed wireless network setups are faster to get into service, particularly in urban and suburban settings, even in the brownfield deployments. Also, they generate revenue faster with a lower capital investment and thereby improve overall ROI and returns.
This is not an “either-or” dichotomy between fixed wireless or fiber. As fixed wireless broadband operators build out dedicated networks, they need fiber at the backbone of their network. At the same time, fiber network operators can take advantage of state-of-the-art fixed wireless solutions to complement their existing infrastructure and rapidly and efficiently extend that last hundred meters. Alaska Communications offers a great example of how to do just that. The company recently deployed multi-gigabit 60 GHz fixed wireless equipment with Gigabit wireless technology to extend their fiber network and connect business and residential subscribers.
The case for fiber and fixed wireless hybrid wetworks
So, if all this adds up to the proverbial win-win, why hasn’t this transition already happened?
The reality is that fixed wireless broadband must overcome an image issue. Whether we’re talking about fiber or copper or coax, wired is a physical medium. Fixed wireless, by contrast, remains for many – particularly executives who have spent their entire careers in businesses based on wired – something akin to black magic. But that, too, will change as operators become more comfortable with fixed wireless communications, learning what they can and cannot do.
In fact, that transition is already underway as more operators become comfortable with fixed wireless. At the same time, the influential 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which writes the cellular communications standards, is also taking greater advantage of fixed wireless, something it hasn’t done in the past. The upshot: as these traditional fiber operators get to better understand fixed wireless, you’ll see an accelerated adoption. That will be a game changer.
Until a couple of years ago, 60 GHz fixed wireless really wasn’t an affordable solution for scaled deployment. What changed? First, the standards bodies came out with 80211.ay, an improvement over the prior standard 80211.ad with a frequency of 60 GHz. Also, the chip vendors, particularly Qualcomm, brought forward silicon that was much more affordable.
Broadband network operators also had qualms about guaranteed service levels with wireless. There’s been no small amount of debate about whether you could offer a guaranteed service level agreement (SLA) with unlicensed spectrum. And while the industry has demonstrated this possibility at scale – it still made network operators uncomfortable.
Service providers want to be able to offer guaranteed SLAs where they’re not going to get inundated with customer complaints along the lines of, “Hey, you said you were going to give me 25 Mbps download, 3 Mbps uplink, and you’re giving me 22 Mbps download and 2.5 Mbps uplink.” Licensed spectrum allows you to do that, but licensed spectrum is also very expensive and difficult to come by. Citizen broadband radio service (CBRS) bridged that gap while the government put aside a huge block of spectrum to lease. That’s cleared the way for operators to do things with the spectrum that they couldn’t do in the past.
The early adopters deploying hybrid fixed wireless and fiber networks are enjoying success. But we’re still in the early innings. My argument to the holdouts is this: if you’re a fiber operator in an urban environment, there’s no better solution than a hybrid network. The combination of fiber and fixed wireless delivers the data rates that you’re striving for – both at a far lower cost and at a far faster speed to the address than any other option. And as 5G technology becomes more prevalent, you have the opportunity to establish yourself in the market with a hybrid approach before the wireless carriers get there with their 5G fixed offering.
Meanwhile, the stars are lining up for fiber and fixed wireless hybrid approaches. With a healthy amount of government funding coming down the pipe to further this process, the money won’t only target rural America; there will be growing opportunities beyond those regions historically considered as unserved markets – basically anybody who isn’t getting 25 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up connections. Believe it or not, you can find several apartment buildings in downtown New York City where you don’t get that level of service with fiber only.
High-performance fixed wireless broadband: more, please
The emergence of hybrid fixed wireless/wired broadband networks is also fortunate, given the changes over the last couple of years in how we work.
Even after COVID is well behind us, the distributed enterprise is here to stay while the hybrid work and hybrid learning environments we’ve grown accustomed to aren’t going to disappear. What’s more, full-on remote work is not going away, especially given the number of people migrating out of congested city centers.
In this era of distributed organizations, there’s a minimum expectation that we’ll be able to work or learn where we are. That also means the expectation of reliable broadband is now table stakes. As the world explores new technologies, platforms and even 3D worlds, the capacity demands on networks will only exponentially increase.
So, if I’m right, broadband network operators will face a big decision how to meet that massive spike in demand. Sooner, rather than later. I know what I’d recommend: hybrid.
