Home broadband can also be wirelessly accessed. What are the benefits for IoT?

People are looking forward to a lower-priced broadband

Do you feel lonely when you work hard in a big city and see your peers showing off their happy lives in your circle of friends? I don’t know what you think, but Xiao Ming does feel lonely when his phone in the rented house in the village in the city can’t load the photos posted by his friends.

I couldn't help but ask him, since the wireless network of the operator is so bad, why not use wired broadband? He said to me, who seemed to have never experienced the suffering of the world, "If I can afford broadband, do I still need to live in a village in the city? Besides, I don't even know when I will rent my house. Wired broadband often requires annual settlement, which makes me, a stingy person, feel that it is not cost-effective."

This is a true portrayal of countless migrant workers in big cities. In fact, due to market competition, the price of wired broadband has dropped significantly compared to before. Those who are still unwilling to access wired broadband are extremely price-sensitive users, and are unlikely to use fixed broadband in the future. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the number of fixed broadband access ports in my country has slowed down significantly since 2017, and the fixed broadband market has become saturated.

For those users who have not yet accessed fixed broadband, they are actually willing to sacrifice some of the speed and quality of broadband Internet access in exchange for lower broadband fees. Broadband wireless access (FWA for short) may just meet their needs.

What is Broadband Wireless Access (FWA)

FWA refers to the use of wireless technology to achieve fixed broadband access for households. The access process is shown in the figure below. Just place a wireless router (called CPE, Customer Premises Equipment, in the communications industry) at home, and you can directly connect to the wireless base station through the wireless network and then access the Internet.

As a low-cost, easy-to-deploy flexible broadband solution, FWA has actually always played an important role in the broadband industry. Except for the Chinese market, the number of new 4G FWA users in 2019 exceeded the number of new wired broadband users; in 12 countries, the number of wireless broadband connections exceeded that of wired broadband. With the development of 5G, more and more operators around the world have launched 5G FWA services, making it the most important business for many operators in addition to wired broadband.

Why are foreign operators so keen on FWA?

First, FWA has always been an ideal choice for rapid broadband deployment in many countries and regions because it does not require road rights, trenching and cable laying, or wall drilling. At the same time, with the maturity of 4G and the arrival of 5G, today's 4G/5G FWA can achieve Gbps downlink bandwidth and provide a fiber-like experience, which is highly favored by operators and users and has become a powerful tool for mobile operators to expand the home broadband market.

Second, the current 5G user penetration rate is low, there are not many implementation scenarios, the network business load of most 5G operators is light, and the investment is difficult to realize quickly. At this time, developing home users and utilizing idle networks can increase new revenue.

Now may be the best time to promote FWA

From a technical perspective, when a technology is easy to use and affordable, it is the best time to expand the market. Previously, 3G and 4G broadband wireless access was not popular, largely because their capacity was very limited and could not achieve economies of scale. 5G provides 10 to 100 times the capacity of 4G, so it has the potential to realize FWA solutions on a large scale.

Ericsson engineers conducted an FWA test and obtained the following data graph in a scenario with a population density of about 5,000 households per square kilometer and a maximum traffic demand of 5,200 GB per user per month. It can be seen that under such a high load, the 5G FWA network can meet the data rate of 95% of users greater than 15Mbps and the rate of 69% of users greater than 100Mbps.

From the perspective of demand, for domestic users in more developed regions, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, the current wired broadband market is close to saturation, and FWA can provide a lower-cost broadband access method.

In less developed areas with difficult construction conditions or low population density, FWA can help users use home broadband. For example, in Inner Mongolia, operators provide wireless broadband to achieve full broadband coverage, allowing every household to experience stable Internet speeds in the information age and conduct Internet+ work such as e-commerce, which is of great significance to my country's poverty alleviation work.

For foreign users, the demand is even greater, because the coverage and quality of mobile networks abroad are much worse than those in China, and the economic level of many countries is not high. Take the tropical island country of Sri Lanka as an example. In 2013, the country's household broadband penetration rate was about 9%. 80% of Sri Lankans live in sparsely populated rural areas, and the digital divide between different economic classes is particularly prominent. Local operators use 4G FWA technology to increase the household broadband penetration rate to 26% in 2019, helping 800,000 people get out of the digital vacuum, and widely use it in many fields such as distance education, smart medical care, and digital finance.

What can FWA bring to the IoT industry?

First, FWA can allow more home users to use broadband, which provides conditions for these families to enjoy smart home appliances. At the same time, FWA also provides a low-cost connection option for home users who already have fixed broadband, enriching their use of various online smart business scenarios.

Secondly, compared with smart devices connected to the LAN, devices connected with FWA are more suitable for remote management. For example, single-product products such as smart speakers and sweeping robots do not require direct connection to the operator's network, and only need to connect to the LAN. However, many IoT devices with security or monitoring management need to be connected to the Internet through the operator's network for remote management, so FWA, which can be done in one step, is obviously more advantageous.

Finally, FWA is safer than LAN. The use of smart home appliances will generate a lot of privacy information about users, and the network password of LAN is easy to crack, while the security level of cellular network is higher.

Final Thoughts

Making every corner of the world connected to the Internet (and making everyone pay for Internet connection) has been the common dream of technology giants over the past few years. According to a report by the World Bank, broadband penetration can eliminate the digital divide and effectively improve the economic level of developing and underdeveloped countries. If the broadband penetration rate increases by 10%, the average GDP will increase by about 1.3%. In areas with developed networks, higher-quality broadband experience and more diversified broadband options can promote more IoT usage scenarios and effectively promote the development of the digital economy. As a low-cost, easy-to-deploy broadband, FWA will naturally play an increasingly important role.