European Business Shows Significant Interest in Fixed Wireless

5G fixed wireless does not necessarily have to garner huge market share to be market-changing in the home broadband business. It might be important even in the business segment of the market. In some cases, the amount of market share fixed wireless represents could affect service provider revenue in significant ways.

The real importance might well come in some highly-competitive, large and saturated markets where home broadband is nearly a zero-sum game. In such markets, one supplier’s gain is balanced by another supplier’s loss.

 

And in such markets, a small shift of market share represents significant incremental revenue. In the U.S. market, market share shifts as small as two percent represent $4 billion in annual revenue.

 

New lines of business worth $1 billion annually are a reasonable test of feasibility for many larger tier-one service providers. Any new proposed line of business generating less than $1 billion in annual revenue is too small to bother with. So fixed wireless easily passes the test of value. 

Among the potential new use cases for 5G--not simply a replacement for 4G phone services--is fixed wireless for business or consumer internet access. According to Omdia, perhaps 25 percent of European enterprises with 250 or more employees plan to use fixed wireless access in place of a cabled connection. 

Nearly 35 percent of small or mid-sized businesses with 50 to 249 employees report they will use, or will consider using, fixed wireless.

source: Omdia 

If actual buying is even half that level, it is significant.