Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reader Forum section. In an attempt to broaden our interac-tion with our readers we have created this forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but we maintain some editorial control to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
Today carriers are racing to offer triple-play and quadruple-play service bundles which include TV, voice, high-speed Internet and mobile services to subscribers everywhere in America. Carriers all over and especially in rural America have been trying various combination of technologies including copper, fiber, cable and wireless for the best service sandwich they can offer their customers at a lower price than their competitors. And LTE is proving to be a game changer.
LTE offers the best of both wired and wireless worlds. It’s a wireless technology with all the benefits of an all-IP wired network. Dish, the satellite TV provider recently launched DishNet, a national, fixed-line broadband service for users in rural areas. Dish has also been vying to use the wireless spectrum it owns to launch an LTE network. Juniper Research estimates that by 2017 revenues generated by LTE services will exceed $430 billion, which is a whopping 453% increase from $75 billion, expected this year.
LTE is a “4G” wireless broadband technology developed by 3GPP, an industry trade group. LTE provides significantly increased peak data rates, with the potential for 100 megabits per second downstream and 50 Mbps upstream, reduced latency, scalable bandwidth capacity, and backwards compatibility with existing GSM and UMTS technology. The upper layers of LTE are based upon TCP/IP, which is an all-IP network similar to the current state of wired communication. It supports mixed data types including voice, video and messaging.
LTE is a great solution for bringing high-speed broadband Internet access to rural communities that historically have remained underserved due to their geographic isolation since it’s often economically unrealistic for telcos to provide broadband access to rural areas using copper or fiber. Rural communities spread over a wide area with lower population density require expensive cabling without sufficient return on capital expense.
LTE could serve to alleviate this problem on multiple fronts. Deploying a wireless technology is significantly less capital-intensive than digging ground and laying fiber over thousands of miles. LTE is a future-proof technology with a clearly path for future development. LTE is also scalable and can support a growing community without expensive upgrades.
The spectrum required for carrying LTE traffic, however, doesn’t come cheaply. Both the availability and cost of this spectrum can prove to be substantial and even prohibitive for smaller telcos. However tier-one carriers which own a substantial amount of spectrum, but do not see a huge financial upside in cultivating rural markets, are letting rural operators lease spectrum to offer their own services.
A case in point is Verizon Wireless with their LTE in Rural America Program, in which they collaborate with rural carriers that serve areas not currently covered by the Verizon Wireless network. Under this program, Verizon Wireless will lease their spectrum and core LTE equipment to participating carriers who then only have to invest in building and maintaining towers as well as backhaul capabilities. This approach is beneficial for all parties involved. Rural consumers get high speed LTE at the same time as their urban brethren; rural carriers are able to quickly build and operate their own “4G” networks without having to own any spectrum; and Verizon Wireless customers can enjoy a seamless network experience when travelling outside of areas that are directly served by Verizon Wireless. Another benefit for rural carriers is sharing all the technological know-how from Verizon Wireless, which results in shorter learning curves. So far, 20 rural carriers in 15 states have already enrolled in the program.
Deployment of LTE for mobile and fixed broadband is picking up steam. However, there are several roadblocks still ahead. Voice over LTE standard, an essential service component, is still maturing. Like any new technology, interoperability between various devices is still an issue and is resource-intensive. In urban areas, data flows have been surpassing data speeds both in the fixed and mobile broadband arena and this trend will motivate carriers to steamroll through these challenges. But rural areas may still need programs like Verizon Wireless’ LRA as well as a regulatory push for faster LTE deployments.
