Fields of Dreams…as Indicated by Sprint’s Voracious Appetite for Backhaul

ARTICLE

Fields of Dreams.as Indicated by Sprint's Voracious Appetite for Backhaul

By Robert Syputa, Senior Analyst
Contact the author at robert@maravedis-bwa.com

Sprint’s announcement of delays in commercial activation of WiMAX informs of how competition will be fought for personal broadband market. Prior analysis that Sprint’s WiMAX service will be driven by high bandwidth applications including point-to-point file and video sharing, IPTV and growing business applications now in development is initially confirmed. Research on Web 2.0, GPS-mapping and wireless broadband enabled business and mass market applications indicates that network usage is likely to flourish along profitable lines as the new generation of mobile devices proliferate on open networks. Sprint is positioning as a world leader in business and personal broadband innovation.

The 3G-LTE development is far from ignoring the rapidly evolving trends to offer higher bandwidths on open networks. The race to build higher capacity into incumbent 3G and accelerate commercial development of 3G-LTE and other measures to bring them into closer alignment with the onslaught of higher capacity, flat-rate WiMAX is aggressively being pursued.

We Digress a Bit

The need for back haul has been at issue for years: the current 'problem' stems from perceptions of operators: mobile voice/SMS messaging operators have planned on increased usage of those services, particularly as they shift to unlimited service plans. But many of them have not planned adequately for file, image and video clip sharing on 3G networks. This has resulted in operators reporting higher than expected, often dramatically higher, bandwidth usage.

Besides bandwidth, latency and jitter is a major problem on loaded networks: Qualcomm's own network demonstrations that compare EV-DO rev a/b networks to UMB show that loading caused by video and file sharing can degrade WCDMA networks while OFDM networks are able to manage traffic to maintain call quality.

IP networks are sometimes characterized as flat pipes upon which all traffic appears the same and thus high bandwidth traffic can easily cause congestion and degrade voice traffic. But WiMAX and other NG systems have quality of service capabilities that gives preference to VoIP and other communications. That should result in the network being able to maintain good voice quality despite network loading. What will degrade is the bandwidth of file sharing and other high bandwidth uses.

The backhaul has been a concern and will remain a concern going forward. This is one of the rationales that could make sense out of the troubled municipal Wi-Fi (muni-fi) markets: while there is little business case for free, ad supported municipal Internet access, there can be a case if government contracts for VPNs and other usage provides anchors the overall service and the city, county or multiple local authority area provides access to an fiber optic grid.

Government Has New Needs for Learning

from both past mistakes and evolving possibilities that are becoming available. Higher capacity and more competition in tier 1 networks combined, in some countries, with access to often vast fiber optic resources and unlicensed or semi-licensed spectrum, provide fresh opportunities for building a City of Dreams, (to paraphrase), combination of public-private municipal broadband. This is among the signature measures of a modern city and regional government involvement in broadband because it leverages both social and economic benefits.

Our advice to the City of Seattle study on broadband was that the tri-county area should first expand the already extensive metro grid fiber optic network to enable wireless and wired connections to citizenry. The Seattle area has several hundreds of miles of fiber optic cable runs which in most cases is hardly used: five-six out of 7 or more strands of fiber are commonly available. This can be extended to form denser metro grids that enable access to homes and businesses. Commonly referred to as FTTN, (Fiber to the Node), the fiber runs in place can be expanded to a grid of nodes placed every 2-5 miles apart depending on population and business density and terrain. Advances in transmission methods have dramatically increased the fiber optic transmission capacity by orders of magnitude. That is perfect for leveraging business plans that open access to multiple service providers enables.

Rather than prescribe the use of wireless or wired technologies or operators, an extended fiber optic grid can spur open competition for government and public services. The grid can be made available for broadband connection using WiMAX, 3G-LTE, WiFi, power-line BB, Ethernet in the First Mile and hybrid combinations. Additionally, the grid can be further extended using point-to-point wireless links and grids.

As an alternative to prescription of free service, the local government can have provisions for reaching underserved segments of citizens. Service providers may fulfill part of mandated public access requirements by providing libraries and schools with PC and Wi-Fi access kiosks. And they can provide a tier of ad subsidized service at low subscription cost.

Municipal wireless projects must become profitable ventures for operators. Operator can do broadband enabled business development within the community through joint venture arrangements. Once proven, the developed uses can be more extensively deployed and marketed in cookie-cutter fashion as self managed or franchise operations. The best startup JVs are then funded for promotion with downstream potential for public offering or private placement. The benefit to operators is that a large portion of their troublesome and expensive backhaul requirement is satisfied before they take extensive risks to build out the network. Extensive backhaul grids provide a framework for ‘build as you grow’ deployments. That removes a large portion of the risk, up-front costs and complexity. And all operators start out with a more even playing field.

Sprint Forward to a New Fields of Dreams

Open wireless networks create a new ‘field of dreams’ for wireless network operator revenues. The limitation and opportunity for new service revenue is availability of licensed spectrum. In countries where it becomes available, such as in North America, semi-licensed spectrum will play a substantial role in government led broadband efforts.

Sprint is pursuing collaborative market development with a large number of Internet, software and service companies. Praduman Jain, Director, 4G WiMAX, Sprint-Nextel, said “We are pursuing numerous collaborative developments including international developments with service providers and operators. We expect to have announcements in coming weeks”. Government is seen increasingly as a partner rather than being limited to the role of a customer.

Increasing access to spectrum contributes in the new age of smart distributed wireless broadband networking to serve government and enterprise requirements.

Lest we not forget that wireless broadband in general plus more focused Wi-Fi are contributing to overall momentum of business development. WiFi will merge and convert to WiMAX as unit pricing dives.

Many of you can imagine practical yet exciting business and government enterprises that are being developed for personal broadband. The challenge for incumbent operators is to convert the new opportunities into revenue. We are witnessing a new field of dreams in which delivering ‘broadband everywhere’ including to underserved segments is possible because it also enables profitable flat rate, and premium content and services to develop.

For more information you can contact the author. robert@maravedis-bwa.com