- How “fixed” should fixed wireless access be?
- Mobile operators don’t really want their fixed wireless subscribers to move around because it causes problems with capacity management
- But there might be new revenue opportunities with nomadic fixed wireless
Nokia has been in the fixed wireless access (FWA) business for several years with a comprehensive portfolio of equipment to serve the market. But the company’s FWA business took a major turn in 2020 when T-Mobile started offering 4G Home Internet. Now, Nokia is taking another cue from T-Mobile and has developed some capacity management software that could allow customers to be “nomadic” with their FWA.
Benny Fallica, FWA Business Development Manager with Nokia, said the Finnish vendor’s original idea was to tout FWA as a complement to fiber deployments, especially in rural areas that are too expensive to reach with fiber.
“Then, T-Mobile came into the picture and disrupted the whole thing,” said Fallica.
T-Mobile went after all kinds of markets with FWA, not just rural, but also suburban and even urban. “They went straight into markets where you already have the option to subscribe to mobile and cable,” he said. “But with T-Mobile’s lower price, you now have more options. T-Mobile is now the fifth largest ISP in the U.S.,” he said.
To be fair, Verizon developed its FWA offering around the same time as T-Mobile, and as most everyone in the wireless industry knows, FWA has become the top use case for 5G. Since mobile operators already have the towers, radios and spectrum, they can tap their unused capacity in many places to increase revenues by offering fixed wireless. In the U.S., AT&T has also begun deploying FWA. And the Canadian operators Rogers, Telus and Bell also offer home internet services.
FWA nomads travel with their gear
One thing T-Mobile has been obsessed about with FWA is capacity management. From the get-go, T-Mobile has monitored the capacity on its wireless networks — at a granular, local level — to make sure it does not degrade the quality of its mobile services.
So, T-Mobile might be a little concerned if its customers unplug their FWA devices and carry them to a different location, such as a second home. It could create chaos in terms of capacity management.
But Nokia has created some FWA capacity management software and is working with a mobile provider on some nomadic use cases.
“We have first-hand experience with one of our customers to allow their subscribers to move their fixed wireless box wherever they want,” said Fallica. “I can use fixed wireless in my primary residence, but during the weekend if I move to my cottage, I can still bring my fixed wireless without having to pay a second subscription. Is this feasible from capacity? Maybe not. But the use case can be explored.”
Fallica declined to name the operator that Nokia is working with on nomadic FWA, saying only that it was “a regional operator.”
Keith Russell, marketing director for Fixed Networks with Nokia, said fixed wireless provides a “much more powerful” broadband connection than a customer could get by using their mobile phone as a hotspot. In terms of fixed wireless, “it’s the same service as at home with Wi-Fi,” he said.
“Some operators block that to keep people from wandering around because they like to sell the service where they have the capacity,” said Russell.
Fallica agreed that “It’s not optimal from a network management perspective. If you don’t have the tools to do properly you might saturate the cells.”
Nokia has the tools
Nokia has already created software to manage, not only its FWA devices, but also the usage and capacity of FWA on networks.
Although both T-Mobile and Verizon are doing FWA capacity management in-house, they could potentially buy Nokia’s tools. The operators might even be able to devise a scheme where people would pay a surcharge for nomadic FWA.
“Out of my imagination I could think of an operator charging an extra $10 if they want to be nomadic with two addresses,” said Fallica. “Otherwise, traffic could be blocked.”
Both Fallica and Russell were careful to not denigrate the in-house capacity management of the operators, but they said Nokia’s tool is pretty good because it takes into consideration different interfaces like network planning tools and network management systems and puts it all together.
