How Do You Know When Fiber or Fixed Wireless Is the Right Solution?

One of the first decisions a broadband operator has to make when planning a new network is also one of the most important: should the network be built with fiber, fixed wireless, or a combination of the two?

There is no shortage of opinions on the subject. Fiber provides tremendous capacity. Fixed wireless can be deployed quickly and can reach locations where construction is difficult.

But choosing the right solution requires looking at more than just advertised speeds.

Start With the Geography

The physical environment should be one of the first things considered.

A dense neighborhood with hundreds of potential subscribers close together can make fiber construction much more practical.

A rural area with homes spread across several miles presents a very different challenge.

Running fiber to every home may require miles of construction for relatively few customers. In that situation, a well-designed fixed wireless network can provide a more practical way to reach those subscribers.

Terrain also matters.

Hills, trees, buildings, elevation changes, and other obstacles can affect wireless coverage. At the same time, those same geographic challenges can make fiber construction more expensive.

Understanding the physical environment is therefore critical before selecting the technology.

Look at Customer Density

Customer density has a major impact on broadband economics.

If 500 potential customers are located within a relatively small area, the cost per customer of deploying fiber can be very different from a situation where 500 customers are spread across 100 square miles.

With FWA, one properly positioned access point can potentially serve multiple customers within its coverage area.

That does not mean wireless capacity is unlimited. Every access point has finite capacity, and operators need to plan for peak usage and future growth.

The important point is that the network architecture can be different.

Consider Deployment Time

Time can also influence the decision.

Fiber construction can involve engineering, permitting, make-ready requirements, construction crews, trenching or aerial deployment, splicing, testing, and customer installation.

FWA can often be deployed without waiting for every property to have a new physical cable route.

For an operator trying to establish service quickly, that difference can be significant.

It can also allow a provider to begin generating revenue in an area while planning a longer-term fiber expansion.

What Do Customers Actually Need?

The technology should also match the application.

Residential customers may have requirements that are very different from a business with cloud applications, security systems, voice services, or large amounts of upstream traffic.

A network designed around peak download speed alone may not perform as expected once dozens or hundreds of customers begin using it simultaneously.

Latency, upload capacity, reliability, congestion, spectrum availability, and backhaul capacity all need to be considered.

Don't Forget the Backhaul

One of the most common mistakes in network planning is focusing heavily on the last mile while overlooking the network behind it.

A wireless access point may be capable of delivering significant capacity to customers, but if the backhaul connection feeding that access point is undersized, the entire system can become a bottleneck.

The same principle applies to fiber.

The access network, aggregation network, and core all need to be considered as part of the overall design.

Sometimes the Best Answer Is Both

There is no requirement to build an entire network using one technology.

A provider might use fiber for the core and aggregation portions of the network while using fixed wireless to reach customers.

Over time, some wireless customers may eventually become fiber customers as construction expands.

This allows the operator to build infrastructure in stages rather than waiting until the entire market can be economically served by fiber.

Make the Decision Based on the Market

Fiber and FWA are not competing answers to the same question in every situation.

The right choice depends on customer density, geography, construction costs, deployment schedules, network capacity, available infrastructure, and long-term growth plans.

The best broadband networks start with those factors and then select the technology that makes sense.

Technology should serve the network plan, not the other way around.

For assistance with WiFi design, support, supplies, pre-configuring, staging and kitting, and wired or wireless network design, reach out to our staff of industry-seasoned engineers at sales@ispsupplies.com.