It might seem obvious that fixed wireless access--though important in many countries where fixed network infrastructure is hard to create and sustain--would also be important in markets such as the United States.
But fixed wireless grew by about 6.6 percent from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the fourth quarter of 2023, significantly led by “healthy growth rates in the United States, especially by T-Mobile and Verizon,” say researchers at Point Topic.
“We expect this trend to persist due to demand for connectivity in remote and underserved areas where wired broadband infrastructure is difficult to deploy, and due to some consumers cord-cutting their broadband access services,” Point Topic says.
What bears repeating is the largely-rural or non-populated character of most of the United States. Most people live on just six percent of the U.S. land surface, according to the USDA.
And about 94 percent of the land surface is unsettled or lightly populated, including mountains, rangeland, cropland and forests, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The result is that fixed networks are expensive across most of the land surface, which is rural, sparsely populated or largely unpopulated. So fixed wireless makes lots of sense.
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