Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reader Forum section. In an attempt to broaden our interaction 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.
Without question, society is going mobile as we move into a fully connected generation. According to a recent study by PwC, mobile Internet revenue will be worth $259 billion in 2014, and by 2017, it will exceed $385 billion, accounting for 58% of overall Internet access spend.
Consumers have discovered the value of mobile broadband and they are building expectations for it to be available everywhere. The explosion in the adoption of mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, is driving limitless demand for bandwidth, both in and out of the home.
However, today’s mobile broadband society presents interesting implications for telecom service providers. Wireline carriers have been feeling the impact for some time, particularly through growing trends such as wireless substitution, which initially involved customers substituting wireless voice services for traditional wireline voice services. As mobile broadband matures, wireless substitution may expand to include substitution for wireline broadband services as well.
Where there are challenges … there are also opportunities
The average consumer doesn’t realize that mobile broadband is hardly wireless. In fact, wireline infrastructure is what truly enables a true mobile broadband experience. The wireless portion travels a few miles at most while the majority of mobile broadband’s journey travels over wireline facilities. Therein lies the opportunity.
Wireline carriers with robust middle-mile fiber networks are well positioned to grow their transport business by providing backhaul for wireless carriers, especially as “4G” networks extend into rural areas, the need to replace copper T1 backhaul circuits with fiber and Ethernet to the cell tower becomes obligatory. Connecting those middle mile facilities to wireless towers for backhaul represents one of the greatest business development opportunities available today. It’s a fairly lucrative one as well, when planned and executed properly. Providing wireless backhaul and transport services for wireless carriers is an excellent long term business, which can help wireline carriers better adapt to the wireless world we are increasingly finding ourselves in.
For wireless carriers, the mobile broadband explosion has far reaching implications as well. The bandwidth demands it creates, challenges wireless carriers to keep pace. Customers have little patience for slow or inconsistent performance. Wireless carriers need to ensure their facilities can meet this demand both today, and tomorrow. Wireless backhaul facilities are critical components for this challenge. These facilities need to be properly provisioned and utilize the right technology to efficiently meet the demand.
Choosing the right vendors, partners and backhaul carriers are crucial for long term success.
From our experience, we’ve assembled a comprehensive list of seven tips for wireless backhaul success which provide excellent guidance to carriers who are developing and implementing wireless backhaul strategies.
1. When planning, look out at least three years. Growing capacity on a yearly basis can be costly in engineering, installation and implementation costs. When purchasing equipment for backhaul needs you should avoid multiple purchases of equipment by forecasting on a three year basis. This will save you money on redundant purchases, incremental upgrades and ensure more network stability. It will also provide a good opportunity for forecasting training needs for your staff and avoiding write-offs from accelerated depreciation.
2. Design your backhaul for scalability whenever possible. It will save time and money if you already have the capability to add bandwidth without additional construction and implementation costs. A scalable design will allow your staff to respond more quickly to growth needs and reduce service outages for testing and turn-up of new services. This construct enables agility, and in turn, will give you the advantage of waiting longer to make the next capacity purchase of bandwidth.
3. Plan and order early. Extended delivery times and unplanned delays happen often with construction and implementation of backhauls. If microwave or fiber is needed, it can take six to 12 months to get the bandwidth required. On remote projects, the lead time can be even longer. Planning early will allow your team to make critical project dates with less cost and better quality. The more time you give your staff to test the new service, the better the chance of finding hidden problems with equipment or design.
4. Keep the number of equipment vendors and carriers involved in a single path to a minimum. The more vendors or carriers you have to engage on an outage, the more delay there will be in restoring your customers’ service. When you purchase a circuit or bandwidth that traverses several carrier networks, you add inherent delays in turn-up and restoration of the service. It can be very frustrating and challenging when you have to coordinate multiple companies and ticket processes during service outages. Having only one group to contact and escalate can substantially improve your restoration time and service levels.
5. Design an IP-based network if possible. Plan to migrate away from traditional TDM networks as soon as it makes financial sense. In the future, as TDM is phased out most products will be IP based to take advantage of that technology’s versatility, quality of service and increased bandwidth capacity. The sooner you get your network there, the better. In most cases you have the choice of an IP-based backhaul or a traditional TDM service. It may be a little more expensive to upgrade to an IP-based service, but the longer you wait, the more equipment write-offs you will incur. By transitioning to the IP network you will have the benefit of all the new features and functionality being offered on the new platforms. IP equipment and bandwidth will continue to become more affordable and will lower the cost of providing service over time.
6. Get a good service level agreement with each service provider involved. The devil is in the details. Make sure you fully understand the support resources, expected restoration times, financial obligations for outages, escalation times, termination language for non-performance, required status updates on open tickets and contact information before you sign up for service. Having a good SLA from each service provider on your backhaul can really make a difference in restoration times and network reliability. It also allows an exit strategy if your service provider is not meeting your needs or the SLA.
7. Get 24/7 access to all test points of your backhaul when possible. If your domain-based message authentication, reporting and conformance (DMARC) is located in a building, telephone equipment space or someone else’s space, it is important to ensure 24-hour access for testing. In many cases, transport is delivered to a telco room that only the owner or their representative can access after business hours or to which access is limited to business hours Monday through Friday. In other cases you might be required to have an escort to gain access to your equipment space. In any case, make sure your lease or service agreement specifies that you have 24/7 access and provides for keys, codes or cards required for access.
Is there anything we’ve missed? What are some tips that you feel need to be shared in order to achieve wireless backhaul success?
