Document Actions
Increasing US Broadband Wireless Speeds Magnify Backhaul Issues
As the growth in US broadband speeds push wireless carriers to faster services adequate backhaul to cell sites becomes a major issue.
An article by
Unstrung covers the backhaul conundrum for broadband wireless carriers and
raises good questions. As the article notes, Sprint recently blamed part
of the slowdown in the launch of its Xohm WiMAX network on inadequate backhaul
issues. Going forward, expect to see this issue to become one of increasing
importance to the industry.
As I recently blogged, the consumer demand for broadband is rapidly increasing
both on the wireline and wireless side. And as carriers of all types strive to
meet this need it is clearly raising the bar for what defines adequate backhaul.
Wireless carriers are driven by a need to turn faster speeds into new revenue
sources and this need is intersecting some older technology at the cell site
level---namely the preponderance of T1 circuits that carriers have used to feed
these sites. For voice traffic this solution has been more than adequate, but
when carriers are saying that their customers will soon demand 100 Mbps circuits
that quickly outstrips the capacity of physical backhaul to sites.
In the US the problem has been further magnified due to our dependence on copper
backhaul versus fiber or microwave. In Europe the E1 (The US T1 equivalent) has
long been more expensive so carriers have already transitioned more to
microwave. In the US major carriers seem to be coping, but to date no one except
Sprint has tried to roll out a high bandwith service such as Xohm. Sprint is
uniquely vulnerable as approximately 80 percent of its backhaul is based upon
copper.
So what does all this mean? More trouble for consumers and carriers. Well maybe,
but we do have some time to fix it and never fear the bigger cities will always
be addressed first so most people will get fixes pretty quickly. What I see here
is opportunity for microwave carriers even in rural areas to offer backhaul
services to cellular companies. Here is a market niche guys---go get it.
Tim Sanders
The Final Mile
_____
tags:
