There’s no small amount of debate about the respective merits of fixed wireless versus mobile wireless. The right answer is the one that offers end users the best possible experience while making business sense for the service provider.
Your decision should be guided by the specific requirements — or using industry parlance, “use cases” — with an eye toward matching the best solution to your users’ needs. Then it becomes a question of factoring in relative cost, complexity and performance. Let’s take a closer look.
Mobile vs. fixed
If the goal is to service a customer on the move around a large geographic area —someone who needs coverage and who will be using a handset as they go about their day — then you may be better off with a mobile solution. If you opt for mobility, you’re going to be paying for the privilege as you factor in the associated backend infrastructure required for such a system.
A fixed wireless infrastructure connects buildings and locations that do not need mobility. In addition, a fixed wireless network can support indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi coverage areas. As long as users with tablets and handsets are within range of a Wi-Fi hotspot, they will have the same quality of experience as when they are using a mobile infrastructure. In a campus situation, for example, a combined fixed wireless and Wi-Fi solution can keep users connected while they’re in transit across a quadrangle when moving from class to class.
Fixed wireless solutions are more akin to speed boats that do what they do very well with sufficient throughput and speed. Compare that with the veritable supertanker represented by a mobile solution; while it can carry lots of data and do a lot of different things, you’re going to pay because it’s got a lot to handle, and things can get very complex.
Expense in deployments
Meanwhile, fixed wireless broadband is undergoing a renaissance. It’s already proving capable, with systems carrying more than 20 Gbps at peak times and throughput of more than 100 MB of data at the edge.
Another consideration: Fiber rollouts for a mobile deployment can take several months to complete. In contrast, deploying a fixed wireless solution is relatively simple to install and doesn’t require complex infrastructure or difficult configurations, allowing a complete network to be turned up in a fraction of the time.
5G fixed solutions are also less expensive than 5G mobile solutions, which require large, ongoing OpEx investments. Indeed, the latter also requires a fiber buildout, which is not just capital intensive but results in a lower ROI outside of dense urban areas.
Lastly, 5G fixed deployments last a very long time, reusing existing site infrastructure. This has the advantage of allowing operators to have one network for several services, including MBB, FWA and IoT.
The upshot: You wind up with a deployment that’s every bit as reliable performance-wise as is mobile wireless — but for about half the cost of the equipment as you avoid the sundry expenses tied to supporting mobile’s more daunting complexity.
A choice for operators
Traditional 5G technologies have been built to provide mobile services in highly dense areas. However, that involves building an expensive core infrastructure to scale. Mobile network operators may still be able to justify paying for a complex core network and making a large CapEx investment — but only if they can service many users in a limited region. That’s why we see 4G and 5G mobile networks concentrated in urban areas: The technology won’t scale in rural areas.
So, operators have a choice to make. If they want to deploy 5G mobile networks to support mobility between cells or sites, they need to go into the project knowing about the upcoming expenditures in CapEx and OpEx. Also, some users may struggle as they contend for capacity on the same network.
If instead they opt to choose 5G fixed network solutions, they might sacrifice mobility, but they’ll incur lower cost as they roll out a simpler-to-deploy solution. Further, 5G fixed networks can backhaul Wi-Fi data as every UE and every device has Wi-Fi connectivity. All told, it roughly equates to a 5G mobile experience in campus and enterprise locations, such as shopping malls where the alternative is a 5G small cell deployment that requires the complex core that manages those networks.
If we’re talking about an instance where you’re trying to connect a building to the internet, fixed wireless solutions offer a far more compelling choice, particularly when considering latency and bandwidth advantages. Staying with the campus setting I pointed to earlier, if students are using Wi-Fi hotspots, or connecting and then reconnecting from one classroom to the next without issues, fixed services are perfectly suited to the task.
