Chaired by our own Editor at large, Alan Burkitt-Gray he was joined by Jason Nicolay, managing director at Houlihan Lokey; Alexander Schwartz, vice president at Tillman Infrastructure; Jack Burton, principal at Broadband Success Partners; and Mirko Voltolini, VP of strategy & innovation at Colt Technology Services.
On the biggest drivers for demand, Schwartz says “the need is universal, it's ubiquitous”. That said Tilman Infrastructure is devoting its efforts on bridging the gap in the suburban and rural areas and “that's predominantly where we built most of our towers,” he added. “We are expanding into more urban settings through strategic rooftop managed partnerships.”
Houlihan Lokey’s Nicolay echoed these sentiments saying: “It's the need for high capacity, whether you're in New York, or you're in rural America, that need is there for everybody.” What does differ, however, is what is being delivered explaining “I think the biggest kind of demand is the type of quality of service and speeds that are being delivered toady.”
Burton carried on from Nicolay’s thoughts in that he’s seeing greater demand for an increase the upstream speed, particularly in hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) network providers.
“Most HFC networks were constructed with quite different downstream and upstream capabilities, which was great for supporting things like Netflix early on, but when people started to do work from home in a big way and needed more remote learning for schools and telehealth etc, the upstream started to get congested and operators are kind of scrambling to increase their upstream which is possible with HFC, as it can change the split.”
As a result of this shift operators that had strictly commercial networks are “scrambling” to get into the residential market either by becoming fibre-to-the-home providers or acting as transport for fibre to the home providers.
Interestingly, Colt’s Voltolini saw the pandemic bring with it unexpected growth in voice services driven by the enterprises now working from home. He adds that there has also been “a shift away from traditional dedicated connectivity towards internet access”.
As for the big question on everyone’s lips, fixed wireless versus fibre, the consensus seems to be that a hybrid approach is needed especially when considering things like 5G.
“There's no 5g without fibre,” said Schwartz. “It's hard to get any sort of very useful, impactful connectivity without fibre and that need is only going to continue to grow. Same goes for small cells which are going to become increasingly important as networks become more densified.”
“I think, more of a hybrid solution with fixed wireless and fibre will become more viable.”
Burton also reminds us that with 5G it really is about two different networks “there's the low band if you will, same spectrum as 4G, 5G. And then there’s the millimetre wave 5G, where you get speeds that compete with fibre.”
But this, according to Burton, so many antennas in a short range from those antennas in order to deliver the millimetre wave 5G meaning “you're probably only going to see that in urban areas that already have fibre infrastructure”.
“So, I really don't see it as being a threat to either the fixed wireless access, or the fixed wireless or fibre, fibre or even HFC access.”
As for the role of LEO satellites in the connectivity conversation, Burton says the biggest benefit is in the rural space.
“I think what it mostly means is that rural customers will be able to get better service than they have been, if they've been able to get any kind of broadband service at all, much quicker than waiting for these fibre-to-the-home builds.”
There is less risk that urban customers are likely to make that switch as there are so many other fibre-based options, that are both competitively priced and deliver high performance connectivity.
However, he cautions any operators providing “mediocre service” in a rural, suburban or semi urban settings, they risk customers saying “to hell with my local poor provider, I'm going to go to this legal service.”
