Has anyone done an analysis of the capacity of FWA systems (in
bits/sec/Hz/km^3)???? I am suspicious that the capacity falls way short of
that which cable guys have at their disposal, and that as the FWA networks get
loaded, performance is going to degrade dramatically ultimately resulting in
churn back to the cable guys. It's very expensive to compete with already sunk
FTTH or even FTTC.
I have done this, and blogged on it. What I have not done fully, and what ignites the FWA-vs-fiber argument re BEAD, is add one more term to that string of divisors. The term is $.
WISPA’s argument, for example, is not that fiber is cheaper per bit over 30 years, but that FWA is cheaper *now*.
If you build planning for a useful life of 7 years, you are reasonably safe today if you include enough overhead for annual growth of 20%, or so history would lead us to believe. If your technology allows average of 10 megabits per user at peak busy hour (generous today), you need approximately 200% headroom to survive without compression, assuming no new technologies radically change user behavior. Risky gamble.
Jeremy Austin