Wireless Backhaul: Big Bucks?

Mobile backhaul has been a big topic of discussion among service providers over the past several years. In part the interest is driven by the concentrated nature of the opportunity. With multiple new broadband networks being built, and upgrades required to virtually all the existing mobile networks,  providers have a few big customers who can order up thousands of links at a time.

And though it remains unclear just how much more backhaul bandwidth will be required, at least some observers think that once networks such as Clearwire get up to speed, and acquire some customer mass, the requirements at each base station might be as high as 2 Gbps. For providers used to selling T1 connections to mobile cell sites, that's a huge opportunity.