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Will Wireless Broadband Speeds Drive the Backhaul Equation into the Ground
Carriers large and small are all trumpeting their customer demand for bandwidth and their ability to meet it, but will this new bandwidth race lead to backhaul meltdown?
I am just back from NXTComm and reading a piece on Unstrung about recent upgrades in wireless bandwidth speeds from Verizon and Sprint on their CDMA networks (to the new Rev. A version) and AT&T's broad rollout of its HSPA technology.
The piece is interesting and talks about the solid increases in speed that the Rev. A and HSPA upgrades will offer to consumers. But these are NOT cheap upgrades the piece cites that AT&T alone will have invested $20 billion on its HSPA improvements by the end of this year. This is more than 5 times the investment placed in Clearwire to build a major WiMAX network around the US. So certainly I could digress into a discussion on the relative cost merits of the two technologies, but what I was really thinking of was where this demand curve is going and how it will affect backhaul.
I spoke on a session with Jeff Belk where we talked about LTE, WiMAX, UMB and more and one clear thread that emerged (and this is borne out by research I did on the US market for Maravedis this year) is that carriers expect consumers to want much larger data pipes in future. Clearly they are all trying to meet this anticipated need. And whatever your preference for edge technology, be it WiMAX, LTE or something else everybody is facing this seeming fact: Customers want more bandwidth.
This brings us to bandwidth. Sprint earlier this year revealed that inadequate backhaul options were a reason for its slow roll-out of its WiMAX network. Some carriers, and Sprint is amongst them, rely heavily on copper-based T1-oriented backhaul to their sites. The growth curve in the use of Ethernet backhaul transport to sites is clearly high. And many carriers of all types are trying wireless backhaul. Everybody is trying to switch to IP architected systems to save money and improve and enhance services. But if, as was revealed in my research, end-user customers will be demanding 100 Mbps service in the next five years, T1 backhaul transport to cell sites just won't cut it.
Wireless carriers are already touting solid download speeds with many offering up to 6 Mbps speeds in the near future and Clearwire boasting it could achieve up to 15 Mbps. But even with today's slower wireless services backhaul is struggling in some cases. I just want to give a heads up out there to nascent carriers, particularly outside the US that are thinking of launching a 4G network---pay strict attention to building a robust backhaul capability or fail to do so, but at your peril.
Tim Sanders
The Final Mile
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