Fixed Wireless Access: Now and Into the Future
Prashil Gareeb
Vice-President of Managed Network and Collaboration Services at NTT DATA, Inc | Driving Platform-Driven Infrastructure Solutions for Client Success
With the increased investment in wireless connectivity across South Africa encouraged by the hype in 5G and W6, more and more enterprises have increased confidence and trust in managed wireless solutions for their WAN and LAN.
Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) classifies connectivity to objects that are stationary or nomadic. At the dawn of the 5G era spurred on by industry 4.0 and the digital society, the demand for high throughput and low latency access everywhere is growing in South Africa. Specifically, for enterprise connectivity, the case for FWA is met with fibre-lookalike features at a comparable or lower cost.
The technical features of FWA have improved significantly over the last few years as techniques in propagation and modulation have matured, spectrum has been made available for mainstream pre-provisioned broadband networks and standards bodies push for investment and interoperability in access and transport wireless technologies.
In South Africa, ubiquity in broadband connectivity can only be achieved through the augmentation of wireless technologies. Beyond 4G networks (and as a precursor to 5G deployment), FWA over point-to-cloud microwave or satellite access is extremely powerful as alternative or secondary access to enterprise deployments, for SD-WAN, internet breakout or M2M applications.
FWA is sometimes regarded as an alternative to Wi-Fi, but that is incorrect. Wi-Fi is usually deployed in conjunction with fixed broadband, which can be regarded as backhaul to the site. FWA can replace both fixed and Wi-Fi at once, but in other cases would be deployed in combination with Wi-Fi, which then covers the final hop as an access layer.
Many enterprises such as smart factories, mines, shipping ports, and large resorts have multiple buildings, as well as indoor and outdoor vehicles, equipment, and facilities that require multiple wired and wireless connections. FWA will play an important role in providing additional connectivity to these private enterprise networks, many of which are in remote and under-served areas.
The future of FWA: Evolving with 5G
The GSMA predicts that while 4G-based FWA has been deployed by mobile network operators as LTE/A, the 5G based FWA in above 6GHz bandwidths is likely to drive large scale deployments. This is over and above 5G deployment for mainstream consumer networks. Equipment manufacturers support this view – Ericsson documents that between December 2018 and February 2020, the number of service providers with FWA offerings increased more than 40%, with more than half of the service providers with more than half of 5G launches in the world have included FWA as a use case.
Zion Market Research predicts expansion of the US 5G FWA market at a CAGR of approximately 97.4% from 2020-2025, with growth attributed by a huge demand for ubiquitous high speed, high performance access embedding ultra-fast millimetre wave technology in both metro cities and rural areas.
5G FWA offers faster rollout and onboarding, for example, reducing deployment time from weeks to less than one day; faster download speeds and the enticing possibility of reducing cost to serve. 5G FWA has been predicted to potentially reduce the cost of mobile broadband by up to 25% if supported by massive MIMO and high-performance, in-house end-user devices or CPEs.
At a global level, STL Partners predict that in the longer term (2023 onwards) improved mmWave technology, including repeaters and other forms of signal-booster, could expand the addressable market for gigabit FWA.
The potential for FWA to enable market disruption is tremendous, especially as we now have the standards enabling network slicing on 5G networks and spectrum is released.
Cover image courtesy Freepik
Chief Commercial Officer (CCO)
3 年A very relevant article Prashil. As you say - “Specifically, for enterprise connectivity, the case for FWA is met with fibre-lookalike features at a comparable or lower cost.” Connectivity, both Enterprise and Broadband is a critical enabler, and in fact, for any digital organization, both FWA and Fibre are required to ensure a consistent, always on service to both employees and customers.