I’ve seen article after article over the last year talking about how 5G is going to bring gigabit speeds to residents and give them an alternative to the cable companies. But most of the folks writing these articles are confusing the different technologies and businesses cases that are all being characterized as 5G.

For example, Verizon has announced plans to aggressively pursue 5G for commercial applications starting later this year. The technology they are talking about is a point-to-point wireless link, reminiscent of the radios that have been commonly used since MCI deployed microwave radios to disrupt Ma Bell’s monopoly. The new 5G radios use higher frequencies in the millimeter range and are promising to deliver a few gigabits of speed over distance of a mile or so.

The technology will require a base transmitter and enough height to have a clear-line-of-sight to the customer, likely sited on cell towers or tall buildings. The links are only between the transmitter and one customer. Verizon can use the technology to bring gigabit broadband to buildings not served with fiber today or to provide a second redundant broadband feed to buildings with fiber.

The press has often confused this point-to-point technology with the technology that will be used to bring gigabit broadband to residential neighborhoods. That requires a different technology that is best described as wireless local loops. The neighborhood application is going to require pole-mounted transmitters that will be able to serve homes within perhaps 1,000 feet – meaning a few homes from each transmitter. In order to deliver gigabit speeds the pole-mounted transmitters must be fiber fed, meaning that realistically fiber must be strung up each street that is going to get the technology.

Verizon says it is investigating wireless local loops and it hopes someday to eventually use the technology to target 30 million homes. The key word there is eventually, since this technology is still in the early stages of field trials.

AT&T has said that it is not pursuing wireless local loops. On a recent call with investors, CFO John Stevens said that AT&T could not see a business case for the technology. He called the business case for wireless local loops tricky and said that in order to be profitable a company would have to have a good grasp on who was going to buy service from each transmitter. He says that AT&T is going to stick to it’s current network plans which involve edging out from existing fiber and that serving customers on fiber provides the highest quality product.

That acknowledgement is the first one I’ve heard from one of the big telcos talking about the challenges of operating a widespread wireless network. We know from experience that fiber-to-the-home is an incredibly stable technology. Once installed it generally needs only minor maintenance and requires far less maintenance labor that competing technologies. We also know from many years of experience that wireless technologies require a lot more tinkering. Wireless technology is a lot more temperamental and it might take a decade or more of continuous tweaking until wireless local loop become as stable as FTTH. Whoever deploys the first big wireless local loop networks .better have a fleet of technicians ready to keep it working well.

The last of the big telcos as CenturyLink and their new CEO Jeff Storey has made it clear that the company is going to focus on high-margin enterprise business opportunities and will stop deploying slow-payback technologies like residential broadband. I think we’ve seen the end of CenturyLink investing in any last-mile residential technologies.

So who will be deploying 5G wireless local loops? We know it won’t be AT&T or CenturyLink. We know Verizon is considering it but has made no commitment. It won’t be done by the cable companies which have upgraded to DOCSIS 3.1. There are no other candidates that are willing or able to spend the billions needed to deploy the new technology.

Every new technology needs to be adopted by at least one large ISP to become successful. Vendors won’t do the needed R&D or crank up the production process until they have a customer willing to place a large order for electronics. We’ve seen promising wireless technologies like LMDS and MMDS die in the past because no large ISP embraced the technologies and ordered enough gear to push the technology into the mainstream.

I look at the industry today and I just don’t see any clear success path 5G wireless loop electronics. The big challenged faced by wireless local loops is to become less expensive than fiber-to-the-home. Until the electronics go through a few rounds of improvements that only come after field deployment, the technology is likely to require more technician time than FTTH. It’s hard to foresee anybody taking the chance on this in any grand way.

Verizon could make the leap of faith and sink big money into an untried technology, but that’s risky. We’re more likely to keep seeing press releases talking about field trials and the potential for the 5G technology. But unless Verizon or some other big ISP commits to sinking billions of dollars into the gear it’s likely that 5G local loop technology will fizzle as has happened to other wireless technologies in the past.