Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) has captivated the attention of the wireless industry in the past two years. With the success of T-Mobile and Verizon in FWA, it’s even more imperative for regional competitive carriers to explore FWA in their own markets. Fixed wireless access has cost advantages to laying fibers/cable and has capacity and speed advantages compared to LEO satellite providers. With the right spectrum/coverage/capacity strategy, it makes the business case even more compelling. 

First and foremost, 5G radio performance has made significant strides over 4G LTE and is now a perfect platform for FWA services. With the availability of the new 5G TDD frequency bands (n41 2.5GHz, n77 C-band, n48 CBRS, etc.), the network can provide significant capacity through increased bandwidth and higher spectral efficiency which are perfect for FWA services because typical FWA customers consume 20 times more data than mobile customers.

Additionally, the use of the massive MIMO (Multi-Inputs Multiple-Outputs) radio platform, often built with 32 or 64 transceiver units to enable sophisticated beam forming, further supercharges the capacity and reach of the 5G base stations. The mMIMO radio’s ability to target individual users with narrow radio beam enables Multi-User MIMO, where the same radio spectrum can be re-used to serve different users in different directions, effectively doubling and tripling the overall cell capacity during peak demand period. With the right spectrum strategy and using carrier aggregation to combine the mid-band TDD capacity layer with low-band FDD coverage layer, operators can optimize and maximize the end user experience. 

Many carriers also have access to millimeter wave (mmW) spectrum (24-39GHz) that has not been used. The mmW products and solutions exist today, both for the base station and the CPE (Customer Premise Equipment), to leverage mmW as a FWA capacity offload layer for operator’s FWA service, freeing up the mid-band TDD and low band FDD spectrum to serve the users toward the cell edge. Given the large amount of mmW bandwidth (often 400-800MHz) often owned by the operators, it can and should play an important role in the FWA network design and implementation.

Lastly, the reason to implement FWA on a 3GPP based platform is the other services it can also offer such IoT (Internet of Things), voice calling, data roaming, network slicing, etc. Once the coverage is in place, operators now have the option to explore many other use cases and become the de-facto provider/roaming partner in their markets, whether it be for voice, data, or even low flying drones. That is precisely why capital market gives higher enterprise valuation to 3GPP based networks than proprietary implementation and that’s an important consideration for many competitive carriers.

It is critical for CCA members to capture the potential FWA customers in their markets and establish incumbency ahead of incursion of the “Big 3” operators or the expanding group of LEO satellite providers. The 5G FWA is not only an opportunity for wireless carriers, but can also be a valuable tool to expand at edge of a wired network (cable or fiber) where the cost of build-out becomes prohibitive. By using the free shared spectrum such as n48 CBRS, a wired operator can easily add 5G FWA nodes at the edge of their network to stretch their coverage and explore additional use cases that may not have been available previously on their wired networks.

To summarize, 5G FWA has demonstrated superior field performance and has been widely accepted by end users. Competitive carriers should explore how they can effectively leverage this technology to capture more subscribers and enable new innovative services. 

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