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Fixed Wireless Enters Starring Role Fixed-wireless broadband is in the spotlight following news of T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint. The addition of Sprint's network, spectrum and IP capabilities may have the new T-Mobile a different perspective on fixed wireless opportunities, but other service providers already are investing in this fiber alternative. After all, the combined Sprint/T-Mobile could deliver home broadband via fixed wireless using a mixture of 5G technology on spectrum, said Mike Sievert, T-Mobile president and chief operating officer, during its recent earnings call. In addition to spectrum, T-Mobile acquired Layer3TV in 2017, planning to enter the TV business. "Now you have a network, where you can provide all this IPTV service not just through their home broadband connection or under their smartphone, but through a wireless alternative to their home broadband as well," he said in the call. Over at Windstream, one priority this year is to accelerate high-speed broadband deployment by using new and existing technologies such as fixed wireless. Speaking during the service provider's recent earnings call, Windstream Holdings President and CEO Anthony (Tony) Thomas discussed the company's debut of fixed wireless high-speed technology. The solution is designed to deliver speeds of up to 200Mbit/s to eligible residential and small to midsize business customers on two Windstream ILEC exchanges, he said. "This deployment will allow Windstream to meet CAF-II requirements in certain areas, as well as to challenge the competition with faster speeds in the marketplace," Thomas said, according to the Seeking Alpha transcript, referring to the Federal Connect America Fund, Phase II, initiative designed to expand broadband and voice to under- and un-served regions. Wireless ISP XCIEN will use Mimosa's fixed wireless access, backhaul and client device solutions to expand its ultra-broadband network for business and residential subscribers. With these fixed-wireless technologies, XCIEN expects to reduce the cost of provisioning point-to-point dedicated services to less than $1,000 for the complete link while providing business customers with speeds of up to 250Mbit/s in point-to-point and 30Mbit/s in point-to-multipoint deployments, according to Mimosa. And Australia's nbn -- which said earlier this month about 6% of fixed wireless cells (or about 500) get so congested they can drop to a performance level of 6Mbp/s per user -- is upgrading many cells, the service provider said. As an earlier adopter, nbn now is deploying some of the latest fixed wireless technologies to bolster services, it said. Related posts:
— Alison Diana, Editor, Broadband World News. Follow us on Twitter @BroadbandWN or @alisoncdiana. |
In a flurry of activity throughout the week, Donald (DJ) LaVoy, Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development at the US Department of Agriculture, and his team spent about $145.8 million in the non-urban or suburban areas of seven states.
Calix reported revenue of $120.19 million – up 4% – in Q4 2019, putting a bounce in the step of company president and CEO Carl Russo and a shine to Calix's ongoing transition from hardware vendor to a provider of platforms enabled by cloud, APIs and subscriber experience.
Looking to curtail e-waste and improve the bottom line, BT will require customers to return routers and set-top boxes, although subscribers will not have to pay a fee when they receive regular broadband equipment.
The industry standards organization is looking to ease operator pain from residential WiFi, while it also sees initiatives in connected home and other projects bear fruit.
Deploying DOCSIS 3.1 across its entire footprint gave Rogers Communications the ability to offer speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s,
contributing to a broadband segement that generated about 60% of the Canadian operator's $3.05 billion (US) in Q4 cable earnings.
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