Mobile Substitution is About to Explode

With the caveat that it often is not feasible, facilities-based competition in telecom often results in more innovation and differentiation than a “wholesale by a single facilities provider” approach. That might be especially the case as 5G is commercialized, as mobile platforms might be able to compete head to head with fixed networks on both retail price and capacity (speed and usage) metrics.

Often, that is because facilities-based providers often use different platforms (fixed wireless, hybrid fiber coax, fiber to home, satellite, mobile), with differing capabilities, “best use” cases, maximum bandwidth and retail pricing of bandwidth.  

Each of those networks has a rather distinct capabilities profile: satellite and mobile with the lowest cost per passing, but relatively high cost per gigabyte; FTTH with the arguably greatest amount of potential bandwidth, with the highest infrastructure cost profile;  HFC offering relatively lower cost facilities compared to new FTTH networks.

Fixed wireless has been most used in rural areas, but will become a more-significant factor in some markets as 5G fixed wireless is commercialized. On a localized basis, Wi-Fi offers the lowest end user cost (often free) but rarely, if ever, the highest bandwidth.

Among the best examples so far of how facilities-based competition leads to more innovation is the use of HFC by cable operators to supply more bandwidth than telco DSL and sometimes even FTTH, at lower infrastructure cost.

That is likely to be the case as 5G fixed and mobile wireless are commercialized as well.

“We believe that prevailing incentive structures will continue to push mobile network operators to invest heavily in their own infrastructure” in Australia, as an alternative to relying on the National Broadband Network, analysts at S&P Global Ratings say.

the design of all networks is converging: the idea being to get access traffic moved as quickly as possible to the optical backbone.

“Taken to its logical conclusion, fixed and mobile networks might only be distinguishable by the "last 100 meters," S&P argues. “Both will require fiber deep into the network.

In fact, assuming a small cell network has access to lots of unlicensed spectrum and millimeter wave assets, the actual architecture resembles a fixed network access architecture: fiber close to the customer and then final connection using some non-fiber means.

Even fiber-to-home networks convert signals from optical to electrical, with actual delivery using copper media (to a Wi-Fi router, perhaps), with direct links using wireless.

Fiber-to-curb and hybrid fiber coax networks are more directly analogous, terminating the optical network someplace close to the end user, and then using some other media (copper cabling, copper wire, fixed wireless or mobile access) for final delivery.

So as small cell networks are deployed, using either fixed wireless or mobile access, they will resemble HFC and FTTH very closely.

In all cases, the design objective is to get traffic off the access network (wired or wireless) and onto the optical backbone as quickly as possible.

Still, the use of rival platforms is likely to produce more innovation than would be the case if all competitors used the same platform.