ATLANTA, GA—The changes across the telecom infrastructure market are well beyond that of “just” a jump from one G to the next—although some of them are being driven by 5G. Fiber proliferation, fixed wireless access as a mainstream internet access technology being offered and adopted on a large-scale basis, proliferation of data centers and compute at the network edge, Open RAN, and U.S. government’s interest in both leveraging commercial cloud, telecom and 5G capabilities as well as an unprecedented push to close the digital divide in the form of the $43 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) fund.
Given all of those factors, the theme at this week’s Connect(X) show in Atlanta, “connectivity everywhere” was apropos. And ultimately, connectivity everywhere means infrastructure that can reach everywhere.
Both the increased funding for rural connectivity and the technology maturation of FWA were evident in a keynote from Bill Baker, CEO and founder of regional internet and phone service provider Nextlink, which has evolved from being a small WISP using unlicensed spectrum, to one of the largest users of CBRS spectrum in the central U.S. as well as a fiber-based service provider operating across eight states.
“I can assure you that five or six years ago, no one was interested in talking to me about rural broadband,” said Baker. “But we live in a different world today.” Nextlink now has nearly 3,000 active towers with another 1,300 in the works, and more than 37,800 fiber passings with almost 79,000 more in development, and Baker discussed the relative pros and cons of fiber versus FWA as a provider of both technologies. And when it comes to speed of deployment, the amount of existing supporting infrastructure for FWA—vertical assets ranging from poles to grain silos, and middle-mile internet connectivity—really matters when it comes to speed of deployment.
“If I’ve got the right answer from an infrastructure standpoint, from a middle-mile standpoint, I can get a fixed wireless site up in a matter of days sometimes—certainly weeks,” Baker said. “Conversely, I can also tell you where there’s nothing from an infrastructure standpoint out in the rural countryside—there’s no vertical assets, there’s no middle-mile for 50 miles—and so that’s a different beast, and you’ve got to do a lot of building. Whether it’s licensed wireless links hopping 15, 20 miles to get where you need bandwidth, to constructing towers on hillsides—50 feet, 100 feet, 150 feet—there’s a lot of work that goes into building infrastructure on the fixed wireless side.”
“Not enough people appreciate what it takes to make that connectivity possible,” said Wireless Infrastructure Association President and CEO Patrick Halley from the keynote stage. “The reality is, it doesn’t happen by accident. It doesn’t happen by the wave of a magic 5G wand. … Without a substantial amount of wireless infrastructure, there is no 5G. There is no app economy. There is no streaming video from the backseat of the car or a concert venue. There are no emergency calls or text messages when you need connectivity most. It’s the infrastructure, built by the people and companies in this room, that keep us connected.”
Halley cited a number of bright spots for the infrastructure industry, including FWA’s reach. “The 5G home broadband success story is real,” he emphasized, calling out figures of almost 100 million covered homes and nearly 10 million subscribers and growing. Meanwhile, he added, “Demand for in-building connectivity is taking off across virtually every sector of our economy,” relaying several anecdotes of hospitals’ use of private 5G networks to supplement existing Wi-Fi, increase coverage and capacity, and ensure security and redundancy for the hospital’s connectivity.
He also acknowledged the current slow-down in mobile network operator capital expenditures, while focusing on the insatiable growth that will inevitably require more spectrum and more infrastructure. “I recognize there are people in this room that are maybe feeling the impact of a little bit of a slowdown in the industry right now,” Healey said. “But I can assure you, the growth is on the horizon. Because the one thing we know that never slows down is demand for wireless connectivity.”
