Recently in Backchannel[1]
one of the writers, a lawyer I believe by calling, has made statements which in
my opinion and my experience are not just wrong, they a truly outright apparent
fabrications based on nothing that is in my opinion acceptable to those with
even a modicum of competence.
Let me first restate some bona fides. Besides a PhD in EECS
from MIT in communications, I then added some fifty years of design and
deployment experience in wireless and fiber. One need look no further than a
list of hundreds of papers on the topic. I have built out fiber in about twenty
countries and frankly found the US the most difficult due to Franchise rules
and pole attachment regulations. The incumbents in the US have a permanent
barrier to entry for any new entrant. Put that aside for the moment.
Let us first compare fiber and wireless.
I. Fiber
Fiber has substantial capacity. Yet it requires many hurdles
and costs an excessive amount per subscriber in capital. Let me list the
hurdles:
1. Franchises: In every town and state there are Franchise
requirements. You just can't build out a fiber system. You must get permission.
The problem; twofold. First towns have Selectmen or the like who generally are clueless,
often supported by Cable Companies, and willing to spends months if not years
negotiating a Franchise. This adds thousands of dollars to the cost per
subscriber and is all too often not realized.
2. Pole attachments: If you get a Franchise, then you have
to get pole rights or other rights of way. You cannot start the negotiations
until you have a franchise so it is sequential and the incumbents who owns the
poles is in no hurry to get to the end.
3. Build Out: The laying of fiber has negative economies of
scale. Even assuming the fiber is free, which it is not, the labor costs are
always increasing and the delays are ever expanding. What may have cost $50,000
per mile five years ago is now $75,000.
4. Drops: Assuming you have achieved the above then you must
get to the subscriber. That is the drop. It generally must be buried and if say
you are in New England the rocks etc. will drive the costs to extreme levels.
5. Capital: The Capital per Sub can readily exceed $5,000
which is quite excessive. If the above were non-existent then one could do it
for almost a tenth but the above are real. Our lawyer friend seems to be
ignorant of these facts.
II. Wireless
Wireless is a totally different tale. First the key difference
is the lack of infrastructure. You do not need a Franchise; you need a license
but if you already have it so be it. Here are the advantages of wireless:
1. Ever Scalaeble Technology: The introduction of 4G with
OFDM allowed the bits per second per Hz to go from 1 to 10. For 5G we see that
using multiple beam antennas we can go from 10 times to 100 times! That means
each user can get well in excess of 10 Gbps.
2. Capital is Incremental: Unlike fiber and even more so
unlike a satellite system, wireless capital per subscriber and be deployed
incrementally. I demonstrated that twenty-five years ago! Again we did it.
Fiber requires a build of infrastructure. Wireless builds as we follow the
customers.
3. Technology Changes in Short Time Periods: Cable TV
converters are an average of 10-15 years old. They seem never to be replaced or
upgraded. A wireless device is upgraded every 18 to 24 months! Thus the
customer can follow the technology curve. As one upgrades cell sites using
software defined modems and the like, then technology is always at the leading
edge and the capital to the infrastructure provider is low.
4. Distributed Systems Can Evolve: As we build out systems
we can do so in a distributed manner. WiFi can be integrated with backbone
wireless and mesh networks are readily available.
We have argued again and again that the Google fiber builds
were fruitless. Now we see they want to build out wireless. Is Google seeing
the light? Not really, they needed licenses. If there is however a sharable
band then perhaps they can execute this strategy.
Now for what in my opinion are the falsehoods of this
lawyer:
Statement 1 is:
One way to increase the
information-carrying capacity of a wireless network is to encode data on those
wobbling frequencies more efficiently. The standards you’ve heard about — CDMA,
3G, LTE — they’re all about jamming more data into each unit (hertz) of
spectrum. A new 5G set of standards will do the same thing, in an even fancier
way: the antennas for very, very high frequencies can be so tiny that you can
put 8 or 16 of them into a handset or base station and then have them all work
together in an array to create a beam of data. Tons and tons of data can be carried
on those aggregated beams. Transmission beams in an array can be steered in
milliseconds to point to an individual user. You couldn’t do this kind of thing
at lower frequencies, because many antennas would need, say, three feet of
space — and you can’t fit that into a handset.
Yes, you can use small antennas at the lower frequencies.
Ever hear of Ham radio? I have a 140 MHz hand held set, I can create a beam
from a set of small antenna. Ever hear of WiFi, even 802.11n uses MIMO, many antennae.
The above statement is just wrong. But even more so, the real antennas are beam-formers at the base station! I did this in 1992, and filed it with the FCC for
my Pioneer Preference. We developed it jointly with MIT Lincoln Lab. The
military has done this for decades. The statement as presented is just wrong,
totally wrong!
She continues:
Until there’s a standard,
carriers that want to be able to reach global markets won’t be anxious to make
devices that will work in just a few places. They want to be able to use the
same frequencies everywhere. Current phones and other widely-used
private-sector communications devices have radios that transmit and receive
only frequencies below 6 GHz, and the very, very high frequency spectrum that
the FCC recently said it would open up for 5G purposes is all above 24 GHz. So
we have a huge legacy replacement problem that will take a while to overcome and requires a standard to fix. All of this
takes years.
Now back in 1990-92 I was COO of what is now Verizon
Wireless. I worked with Qualcomm to introduce CDMA. We worried about turning
the ship, from analog to digital, but it worked, seamlessly. Frankly I would
suggest that the customer never noticed. Why? Simply because the replacement
time for handsets is about 2 years! Thus with such a short replacement time the
turnaround is painless. It did not and does not "take years". I did
it! Good Lord, look at the facts!
She continues:
Again, wireless and fiber are
complementary. Carriers know this. People call the cables between cell towers
and central network offices “backhaul,” and when Verizon launched its 4G LTE
network in the US covering 93% of the population it needed about 30,000 towers,
each one of which had to have a fiber connection. But for a high-frequency 5G
spectrum to cover that same population, you’d need to reach many millions of
towers and base stations with fiber. Remember, you need to be very close to
base stations to pick up and transmit these ginormous amounts of data across
high-frequency airwaves. We’re going to have to have fiber interconnection
points right next to houses and office buildings, and in many places fiber
running inside those buildings. And to reach indoor areas with reliable high
capacity, you’ll need multiple antennas inside rooms that can beam signals
towards you from multiple angles (to avoid the “people as bags of water”
problem).
The back-haul has always been with us. We actually used
wireless for many of them but alas fiber can work as well and it can be shared
with multiple carriers as are the cell towers. I agree that with the ultra-high bands
proposed for the new releases they are of short distance. Worse they do not
work in humid environments, tried that one folks. So using the higher bands may
not be really good to use and why then does one assume millions of towers! That
is just in my opinion a stupid idea! One may then have an evolving multi-tiered
network, with micro and nano cell nodes at customer premises as we have WiFi
today.
Also 5G is a technological change, and evolution. One can
use the old bands but with the new technology. One can get 100 bps/Hz and with
a few hundred MHz and adaptive beam formed antennas one gets Gbps links to
local users on demand.
It is my opinion that this lawyer has put forth a straw man
that does not in any manner reflect reality. Indeed, no one is proposing
building millions of towers. Engineers just are not that, shall we say, stupid. I
cannot perhaps say the same for those technologically impaired.
Posts
