I wrote last week about what it’s going to take for the big wireless companies to offer 5G fixed wireless in neighborhoods. Their biggest hurdle is going to be the availability of fiber deep inside neighborhoods. Today I look at what it would take for fiber overbuilders to integrate 5G wireless loops into their fiber networks. By definition, fiber overbuilders already build fiber deep into neighborhoods. What factors will enable fiber overbuilders to consider using wireless loops in those networks?

Affordable Technology. Number one on the list is cheaper technology. There is a long history in the wireless industry where new technologies only become affordable after at least one big company buys a lot of units. Fifteen years ago the FCC auctioned LMDS and MMDS spectrum with a lot of hoopla and promise. However, these spectrum bands were barely used because no big companies elected to use them. The reality of the manufacturing world is that prices only come down with big volumes of sales. Manufacturers need to have enough revenue to see them through several rounds of technical upgrades and tweaks, which are always needed when fine-tuning how wireless gear works in the wild.

Verizon is the only company talking about deploying a significant volume of 5G fixed wireless equipment. However, their current first-generation equipment is not 5G compliant and they won’t be deploying actual 5G gear for a few years. Time will tell if they buy enough gear to get equipment prices to an affordable level for the rest of the industry. We also must consider that Verizon might use proprietary technology that won’t be available to others. The use of proprietary hardware is creeping throughout the industry and can be seen with gear like data center switches and Comcast’s settop boxes. The rest of the industry won’t benefit if Verizon takes the proprietary approach – yet another new worry for the industry.

Life Cycle Costs. Anybody considering 5G also needs to consider the full life cycle costs of 5G versus fiber. An ISP will need to compare the life cycle cost of fiber drops and fiber electronics versus the cost of the 5G electronics. There are a couple of costs to consider:

• We don’t know what Verizon is paying for gear, but at the early stage of the industry my guess is that 5G electronics are still expensive compared to fiber drops.
• Fiber drops last for a long time. I would expect that most of the fiber drops built twenty years ago for Verizon FiOS are still going strong. It’s likely that 5G electronics on poles will have to replaced or upgraded every 7 – 10 years.
• Anybody that builds fiber drops to homes knows that over time that some of those drops are abandoned as homes stop buying service. Over time there can be a sizable inventory of unused drops that aren’t driving any revenue – I’ve seen this grow to as many as 5% of total drops over time.
• Another cost consideration is maintenance costs. We know from long experience that wireless networks require a lot more tinkering and maintenance effort than fiber networks. Fiber technology has gotten so stable that most companies know they can build fiber and not have to worry much about maintenance for the first five to ten years. Fiber technology is getting even more stable as many ISPs are moving the ONTs inside the premise. That’s going to be a hard to match with 5G wireless networks with differing temperatures and precipitation conditions.

We won’t be able to make this cost comparison until 5G electronics are widely available and after a few brave ISPs suffer through the first generation of the technology.

Spectrum. Spectrum is a huge issue. Verizon and other big ISPs are going to have access to licensed spectrum for 5G that’s not going to be available to anybody else. It’s likely that companies like Verizon will get fast speeds by bonding together multiple bands of millimeter wave spectrum while smaller providers will be limited to only unlicensed spectrum bands. The FCC is in the early stages of allocating the various bands of millimeter wave spectrum, so we don’t yet have a clear picture of the unlicensed options that will be available to smaller ISPs.

Faster speeds. There are some fiber overbuilders that already provide a gigabit product to all customers, and it’s likely over time that they will go even faster. Verizon is reporting speeds in the first 5G deployments between 300 Mbps and a gigabit, and many fiber overbuilders are not going to want a network where speeds vary by local conditions, and from customer to customer. Wireless speeds in the field using millimeter wave spectrum are never going to be as consistently reliable and predictable as a fiber-based technology.

Summary. It’s far too early to understand the potential for 5G wireless loops. If the various issues can be clarified, I’m sure that numerous small ISPs will consider 5G. The big unknowns for now are the cost of the electronics and the amount of spectrum that will be available to small ISPs. But even after those two things are known it’s going to be a complex decision for a network owner. I don’t foresee any mad rush by smaller fiber overbuilders to embrace 5G.