All that Glitters is not FWA
From the latest AGL eDigest

All that Glitters is not FWA

Ernest worthman Ernest worthman

Ernest worthman

High-Technology Industry Analyst, IEEE senior member, Editor 6G World, Writer/Panelist/Speaker

Published Apr 22, 2021
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Mobile network operators (MNOs) have paid a lot of lip service to the fixed wireless access (FWA) segment. Some of it has been in the light of being seen as the great saviors riding to the cause of closing the digital divide. I would have to imagine they are likely salivating at the prospect of the government’s new plans to throw billions of dollars at them as incentives to do what they have been getting handouts for all along. Finally, however, with the rapid uptake of streaming media, they are seeing a new rash of opportunity to steal market share from cable TV providers (who better come up with a new strategy or die on the vine).

But when I say that all that glitters is not gold, that means with all the clamor of FWA being as good as wired, it is not the golden goose they seem to be claiming.

First of all, we are talking wireless which has challenges that wired does not. Second of all, much of the discussion is around a mmWave-based network to the premise. And, depending upon which mmWave frequencies are decided upon, other challenges may pop up as well.

In a recent discussion by some analysts at Cowen, they talked about the perception that consumers have about FWA. They noted that consumers equate speed with quality. That is likely true. But where I differ with that vector is that the consumer is not all that well versed in FWA, and furthermore, just like most wireless technologies, they really do not care. All that matters to them is can they get data reasonably fast and cheaply. The “how” is rather immaterial to them as long as the costs are comparable. So, I tend to disagree that the MNOs need to up their marketing game to convince the consumer it is as good (almost) and reliable as fiber. I think all they need to do is offer it with reasonable speeds at a competitive cost and it will just be another broadband option.

There are some valid concerns with FWA, however. The first being how much one can load on an FWA link. With fiber, 400 Gbps is the norm and 800 Gbps is just around the corner. In fact, an 800 gigabit per second connection has been made over a live single fiber optic link in a joint test last year conducted by Infinera and Windstream through a fiber optic line stretching from San Diego to Phoenix. Plus, one can load the heck out of fiber with little degradation in speed until the knee is reached.

And, unlike wireless, which has a finite bandwidth much lower than fiber, fiber has a much better upgrade path than wireless. In fact, as far back as 2014, there was a joint group of researchers from the Netherlands and the United States who pushed 255 Tbps, (yes terabits) down a single strand of glass fiber.

That, of course, is not practical for general availability (GA) but shows the potential of fiber optic transmissions. Typically, however, 100 Gbps is ho-hum nowadays and 1 Gbps is the norm for fiber in built-out areas.

In reality, comparing fiber to FWA is a bit self-defeating. Fiber will always win. The two are completely separate platforms and expecting FWA to ever compete with fiber performance is ridiculous. There have been tests where 1-Gbps performance has been reached. But to deliver that for any real density will be challenging and expensive (it can even be challenging for rural areas with a wide distribution of user locations). FWA needs to simply be an alternative option in some markets and the only option in others.

At present, some use cases are working relatively well. Verizon has been delivering 5G FWA since 2018 but it was very limited and minimally speedy (up to about 300 Mbps). Late last year some tests in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area clocked Verizon between 1 and 2 Gbps using around 400 megahertz of mmWave spectrum. The distances are up to a kilometer. This is for both line of sight and non-line of sight (LOS and NLOS). Their 4G LTE FWA is getting speeds of 50 Mbps for downloads. Going forward they want to bring the C-band spectrum into play and integrate it with FWA. And last year T-Mo rolled out some 4G FWA with 5G expected sometime this year.

However, FWA is haute right now. There is quite a bit of pressure to get it going. And there is a lot of money on the table from the government to advance this.

But hold the presses! Quantum fiber (whatever that is) is coming sometime this year if you believe the Lumen (formerly CenturyLink) noise. We will do a drill-down on that in a future column.


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