What is FWA?

Ten years ago, most consumers would have thought it impossible that you could watch a HD movie, stream music, or even just browse the Internet and do work emails on your phone. The idea of wireless broadband over the local cellular wireless network just wasn’t considered viable.

And for good reason. At that time, the cellular network didn’t have the required download speeds, bandwidth, or stability compared to wireline connections to provide comparable broadband connectivity and high-speed Internet. *

This is not the situation today. High-speed, affordable 5G broadband connectivity that compares to the speed of wireline alternatives is fast becoming ubiquitous in coverage around the world.

This means it is now technologically and commercially viable to deliver broadband into homes straight over cellular. This is the promise of 5G Fixed Wireless Access, or FWA for short.

And this capability is an exciting new option for homes where laying new wireline connections may not be the most economically viable way to provide or upgrade a pre-existing broadband connection.

So, for some consumer homes, cellular can provide a more cost-effective solution than wireline-based broadband. This is because it gives the option of not having to dig up a single road to install or upgrade. And it doesn’t require an engineer to install (see later).

In fact, the days of the copper cable telephone landline are nearing an end in many territories around the world anyway. And now, it seems, 5G cellular will offer an alternative for broadband that may be more cost-effective for the last mile, for both operators and hence consumers. Particularly outside of high-density city population centers.

How big is the market for FWA? Where’s the biggest case study to date?

The biggest market for FWA today is the U.S. In fact, around ten percent of U.S. consumers now receive their home broadband over FWA cellular instead of traditional cable. And I expect this percentage to continue to grow, both in the U.S. and around the world.

In the U.S, AT&T is investing $5 billion in FWA, according to a recent report in SDxCentral. And both T-Mobile and Verizon are scaling extremely strongly in the FWA market too according too, says market analyst Ookla.

Fiber will remain the dominant delivery technology. But FWA is definitely finding a significant niche for providing consumer home broadband to underserved, often rural, areas. Areas where there are no, or just one, fiber operator providing fixed line broadband.

Cellular operators have established relationships with hundreds of millions of American consumers. So, it is a natural step for them to offer them home broadband services over the 5G cellular network, where suitable and available.

It is anticipated that the rollout of FWA in other countries will follow a similar trajectory to that already seen in the U.S. In fact, any country with good, geographical 5G network coverage will present an early market growth opportunity for FWA. The growth will, like the U.S, be driven by the major cellular carriers who see it as an opportunity to win consumer home broadband customers from the traditional cable operators.

How does FWA work?

FWA will deliver broadband to consumer homes leveraging local cellular network infrastructure. Put very simply: the broadband signal comes in wirelessly over the pre-existing cellular network outside, rather than through any kind of hard-wired cable buried in the ground.

To install FWA requires a cellular-Wi-Fi hybrid broadband router to be supplied to a consumer’s home. This is all from the cellular side that is required in terms of customer premises equipment.

This, once plugged in at an appropriate location (see below), will deliver high-speed consumer broadband quite literally ‘out-of-the-box’. In fact, the installation is so simple, consumers in the U.S. are installing FWA themselves using little more than an app.

The only ‘drawback’ is that a consumer will have to locate their cellular router at a suitable location near a window where the cellular signal is strongest in their home. This will invariably not be the ideal location for their home Wi-Fi router that the FWA cellular router will double-up as.

This means in all but a few cases, where a home is small enough, the consumer will also have to install some Wi-Fi range extenders too. But the same app can be used. And the process made simple enough once again to not require an on-site engineer.

The challenges, risks, and limitations of FWA

Compared to a fiber cable, Fixed Wireless Access on the cellular side will be subject to weather conditions and physical transmission issues through objects outside a home. In addition, cellular is a shared public network. This means actual broadband speeds can – and will – vary quite significantly, depending on how busy the local cellular network is.

As a result, the Wi-Fi side of the broadband provision must be as optimized as much possible to compensate. It cannot be a weak link. This means Fixed Wireless Access should always be combined with a managed Wi-Fi solution.

The variability of FWA speed and stability on the cellular side makes it even more critical that the Wi-Fi must be adequately managed. This includes dynamic, real-time optimizations to ensure an excellent user experience.

For Fixed Wireless Access broadband to continue to succeed and grow, its delivery must come without any significant drop in consumer quality of experience.

Bottom line: It must be as comparably reliable and as delay-free (low latency) as a fiber-optic connection even if it isn’t quite as reliable technologically. And this is an important paradigm shift in consumer broadband delivery.

And a vitally important one. Because some consumers may initially perceive switching to, or installing, an all-wireless last mile solution for their broadband as a bit of a ‘risk’. To most consumers, their broadband is connection is as essential-a-utility as their water and energy nowadays.

So, any ‘teething’ problems that may arise from Fixed Wireless Access could be judged extremely harshly. And will certainly not help continue its early uptake success in the U.S. Not least because with the rise in social media means consumers have never been more well-connected. Or have had the ability to complain more easily and publicly in their millions when things go wrong.

In home broadband, it is the broadband service provider that always gets blamed if there’s a problem with the quality of service from the consumer side. No matter what the cause.

So, if Fixed Wireless Access doesn’t work, even if it’s a Wi-Fi problem, there will be nowhere to hide for operators. As with any home consumer broadband, operators must strive to deliver as exceptional quality of experience and uptime for the consumer as possible.

FWA opportunities unlocked by Qualcomm and Airties

This is why the recently announced Airties collaboration with Qualcomm is so exciting. It will see wireless experts working together from both sides of the FWA broadband equation: Qualcomm on cellular and Airties on managed Wi-Fi. The two companies will now work together to develop seamless FWA solutions. Solutions where both cellular and Wi-Fi are designed to work optimally together in a much more challenging consumer broadband delivery application compared to wired fiber.

A collaboration that will combine the proven reliability, stability, and security of cellular wireless technology from Qualcomm’s long-standing leadership in the field; with the managed Wi-Fi solutions that Airties is expert at providing.

Consumers just want a rock-solid, reliable connection that always works, throughout their entire home. This includes high speed access for laptops, tablets, smartphones, HD TV, video calling, cloud gaming, and high-quality virtual reality. And none of these applications are expected to get any less demanding on home Wi-Fi networks.

Meeting demand for this level of broadband performance is not simply a function of how fast, or wide, the broadband link is. It’s a function of how smartly this is distributed over the entire home Wi-Fi network and how the ever-changing connectivity conditions in the home are appropriately managed.

No two homes are exactly alike when it comes to delivering Wi-Fi. It demands a managed network and one that can make full use of Wi-Fi mesh extenders whenever and wherever required.

Airties monitors this using a ‘Wi-Fi Experience Index’ that it developed. This combines a range of connectivity optimizations including user profile-based steering of bandwidth, Wi-Fi channel management, and automatic selection of best network topology. The index is typically expressed as a numerical value between 0 and 100. The higher scores indicating a better Wi-Fi experience. Only through measurement can quality of experience be guaranteed. You cannot improve what you cannot, or do not, measure.

Article by:

Metin Taskin,

CEO & CTO