On 5/Jan/20 22:56, Michael Thomas wrote:
It occurs to me that what we're really quibbling about here is where fiber ends.
Indeed. The notion that wireless will replace fibre is misplaced. Wireless is just so prevalent because folk don't want to be hooked up to some kind of wire. It limits mobility. But make no mistake; at the front of that wireless mobility is a wire carrying bits, and going forward, it's mainly going to be fibre.
Is it at every street corner, or is it directly into my house?
This will vary by market (both at a national and international level). But everyone is working toward fibre. Whether it be up to the curb + copper to your house, or all the way to your house, it will drive significant bandwidth that any kind of wireless can never support as a backhaul medium.
It seems to me ftth is the long term win economically because not everybody cares about each upgrade to wifi and are happy to wait until they do care -- if ever.
Agreed. Until about 4 years ago, I ran your usual crappy wi-fi AP's around my house whose software you can only upgrade with a full hardware replacement. Those had some kind of 802.11a/b/g/n hooked up to a 768Kbps up/1Mbps down ADSL service I had. 1 year later, FTTH came to my house and I was tired of getting locked into silly CPE vendor habits. So I bought 2 Google OnHub AP's (802.11ac) + a Mikrotik CPE + home Ethernet switches. I can do 100's of Mbps of bandwidth over-the-air, and my 100Mbps FTTH service more than caters for my and my family's needs. I have no interest in 802.11ax for the foreseeable future, in my domestic setting at least.
Carriers, on the other hand, have to forklift in the new equipment at every G+1. That costs a lot of money which they have to recoup through higher fees. And they have to buy spectrum which is expensive. And they have to buy/rent real estate which is expensive.
All true! And deploying fibre + wi-fi costs far less than this if you are looking to minimize latency + massively increase bandwidth toward a large set of end users on a long-term basis, where you can sustain ongoing improvements in performance as technology develops, without having to flip your skin inside-out.
But people say ftth is expensive. But expensive to all of the stuff that wireless carriers need to deploy? Color me extremely dubious. It's not like rent seeking is exactly a secret with carriers, and that's what this smells like to me.
FTTH being expensive depends on the unique dynamics of the environment the market is in; and I'm sure this group knows those dynamics quite well. I've given this issue a lot of thought over the last couple of years, and I can't come up with any other way that we can ensure widespread FTTH deployment to as much of a country as possible without some kind of government involvement. And we have done this before, as governments anyway, i.e., when electrification, road construction, water systems and POTS services were all done with public funds for the delivery of what was considered basic services. Some will argue about whether the Internet should be considered a basic service. However, if we are looking to diffuse it to folk like we did water, power, road transportation and a simple copper voice line, we can't rely on private businesses whose sole incentive is profiteering. A great example that has always impressed me is the Stokab, which is owned by the City of Stockholm: https://www.stokab.se/Welcome-to-Stokab/ Stokab have deployed dark fibre to each and every square foot of Stockholm, as well as surrounding municipalities, and offers an open access network to all operators on the same commercial terms. Despite Ericsson being a Swedish company, I am not overly confident that Stockholm residents are going to be battling about whether they perform most of their Internet activities over 5G or fibre + wi-fi.
The only advantage they have is that they can do handoffs which while useful, is not a deal breaker in a *lot* of situations. Other than that, I really don't want to use their air bits.
Like I said before, I personally don't think seamless hand-off is the killer app. The kids don't call each other; it's uncool. Already, VoWiFi hand-off to GSM doesn't work. And when the call breaks, we are all just used to taking the hit and re-dialing. So if the MNO's are trying to make seamless hand-off a selling point, they are better off spending their time doing other things. Mark.