Fibre still preferred in SA: But FWA takes it further

Gary Woolley, Chief Commercial Officer at Comsol

Demand for fixed wireless access (FWA) is growing worldwide as the costs of FWA infrastructure come down and need for high-speed connectivity increases.

This is according to Gary Woolley, Chief Commercial Officer at Comsol, who says South Africa is following global trends, with adoption of FWA soaring.

• For more information about Comsol, click here.

“Recently, Verizon – who we have done a lot of work with – said it plans to use 5G mid-band C-band spectrum and high-band millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum to double its FWA service footprint to 90 million homes and businesses by 2028,” Woolley notes.

“Around 2018, we compared notes with Verizon on what Comsol has been doing over the last decade within the licensed FWA space, and we’ve seen them adopting both mmWave and C-band licensed technologies to extend their fibre footprint in the US. Comsol has led this market in South Africa, and we are seeing similar growth here,” he says.

Woolley says a major driver in the growth of FWA is a need to connect end users faster and more cost effectively. 

He explains that FWA offers quick deployment and wide accessibility, especially in underserved areas and in areas where density is high, making it an important technology to complement fibre expansion in the South African connectivity landscape.

Extending fibre

He says: “At the moment, there is still a lot of fibre right to the edge, to both homes and businesses. But laying fibre is costly, and it’s a business risk for network operators. To get coverage with fibre, you need to invest a lot in infrastructure and that cost alone could bury a business. Once you’ve laid down fibre, you can’t just rip it up and use it again if the market isn’t there. In addition, in the South African market, last mile fibre tends to get damaged and dug up. The solution to extend fibre to more customers is to put a wireless base station up to cover the last mile. What this also means commercially is that if you don’t get the adoption you expect within said area, you can move that base station around and reduce the business risk.”

He says: “FWA is effectively an extension on a fibre network. Fibre can’t be everywhere: you will always need fibre to a point. With FWA, from that point, you can rapidly connect thousands of end users and businesses to a stable broadband connection with big capacities. In a South African context, this has become more feasible because of the spectrum that has been allocated. Access to licensed spectrum is important, because if you want a fibre-equivalent product, it needs to be run over licensed microwave, which might be described as ‘fibre in the air’.”

He adds: “Coupled with that, the cost of licensed FWA equipment is coming down, especially within the standards-based 5G world as the R&D behind that technology starts to pay off. Globally, 5G FWA has been massively adopted and pricing is coming down, especially on the CPE chipsets. This enables companies like Comsol to offer a far more cost-effective solution.”  

Licensed FWA for business

Woolley notes that Licensed FWA offers customers reliable, fibre-like connectivity for a primary or secondary connection. 

Comsol’s Licensed FWA differs from unlicensed FWA in that it offers an uncontended, secure SLA-based service, with built-in resilience.

Comsol links its high performance Licensed FWA last mile connections to multiple fibre backhauls to mitigate the risk of fibre network service interruptions, and builds power redundancy into its base stations to mitigate the impacts of load shedding. 

Woolley expects demand for Comsol Licensed FWA to accelerate next year.

He says: “Comsol currently covers 80% of the metros within South Africa, and now we’re focusing on connecting the next 20%. There are large areas of South Africa that are underserviced, where business customers are looking for SLA-driven services. We’re seeing more demand, and even small businesses in little towns are requesting bigger capacities, especially as they move a lot of their applications into the cloud. Businesses are looking for resilience in their connections, meaning a fibre link, a wireless link, and SD-WAN.”   

For more information about Comsol, click here.