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Lumen Technologies recently hired Dave Ward as its new CTO
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He mentioned Lumen is “in talks” with some FWA vendors and even wholesale fiber providers to expand its footprint
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Lumen wants to give both businesses and consumers the option to divvy up their bandwidth
Some broadband operators view fixed wireless access (FWA) as a looming, competitive threat. Lumen, however, sees an opportunity knocking, according to the company’s new technology chief.
In an exclusive interview with Fierce Network, Lumen CTO Dave Ward said while Lumen is firmly in the “fiber first” camp, that doesn’t mean it’s opposed to using FWA, particularly in hard-to-reach rural areas.
Actually, “Lumen’s been working with and deploying radios (i.e., fixed wireless) for years,” he said. Ward added the company is in talks with “several” FWA vendors and has proof-of-concept trials “going with many of them.”
“In cases where we don’t have coverage or we need [to get] to that extension cord, we’re absolutely experimenting, proof-of-concept-ing and using radio where we need to use [it],” Ward stated. “It’s fiber first but…we’re not afraid of fixed wireless.”
And Lumen isn’t shying away from partnerships with wholesale fiber providers, either – companies that can give Lumen the reach it doesn’t have on its native network.
“There is now the rise of investment and creation of companies that are doing wholesale fiber access,” he said. AT&T’s Gigapower is one of them and even T-Mobile is getting into the space with its recent Lumos deal.
Lumen is in “active discussions” with some wholesale fiber players, Ward went on to say, without mentioning any specific companies.
Essentially, these discussions are to make sure that “we understand how the companies can work together, both from a network architecture point of view as well as a systems architecture point of view.”
And of course, how such a service will be marketed.
“How is it going to be labeled, who’s working with the customer, who’s providing the service – all of those now are in proof-of-concept,” said Ward.
Heeding the middle mile
We’ll be keeping an eye out if Lumen does decide to make a play into FWA or wholesale fiber. But that’s not all Lumen has up its sleeve.
California in October announced it will pay Lumen $400 million to construct 1,900 miles of fiber as part of California’s Middle Mile Broadband Initiative. Lumen is one of several providers that will contribute to the state’s open access network.
Ward explained Lumen’s build in the state will basically focus on the I-5 Corridor, around which there are “lots of towns and cities and municipalities that are underserved.”
“Most folks think of BEAD funding as only related to actually getting homes lit,” he said, but the money also involves building “more infrastructure to be able to get to these communities.”
As for the technology on that last mile, that’s up to the localities to decide. Whether that’s fiber, FWA or even copper.
“Think of it this way. It could be fiber-to-the-town, fiber-to-the-village…and then from there, it could be fiber all the way up the home or it could be radio or another choice,” Ward explained.
And that’s something that is new in the U.S., that “we’re looking at these different access technologies agnostically.”
Because the capabilities of fiber and FWA have “improved to the point that we can actually potentially use them in different situations, depending upon what a community looks like.”
Carving up bandwidth
When Ward took the helm as CTO, he was tasked with boosting Lumen’s network-as-a-service (NaaS) platform, which launched in 2023.
He plans to do so in a couple of ways. For enterprises, this means establishing a connection on the premises, which then extends “all the way into the cloud” with services like virtual local area networks (VLANs), pseudowires or IP connectivity.
“So I get a 100-gig link from Lumen and I can carve that up into ‘I want 10 gigs to go to Amazon…20 gigs to go to Microsoft.’ Rinse and repeat,” he said. “That part of NaaS, all the way into the in-building, is something that MPLS promised and never delivered.”
Seems pretty useful for businesses. But here’s the kicker: Lumen wants to give consumers that same option, too. The company offers NaaS in its Quantum Fiber residential service.
“That device in the home is able to take the 10-gig or 8-gig bi-directional symmetric bandwidth that we have and be programmed such that a consumer can even carve up their bandwidth,” Ward said.
He explained one of his career goals is to “create a fully programmable internet.” And he thinks that’s possible for both enterprises and consumers.
Consumers for instance may want dedicated bandwidth for remote work and then allocate the rest for things like streaming and gaming. They want an easy way of doing that.
“I want to be able to connect right now where I want to go, I want this much bandwidth and I want to do it all different tomorrow,” he said. “That level of sophistication may be beyond what folks are thinking about today.”
“But without a doubt, I want to get over the hurdles that exist today of ‘I’ve got a pipe, that’s all I can do with it,'” Ward concluded.
