How 5G Fixed Wireless Access can help the US bridge the digital divide

As the internet has evolved over the last three decades from solely academic use to widespread commercial applications, the requirements of internet connectivity have grown. Over the past two years, reliable access has become especially vital: Working from home, schooling from home, seeing your doctor for telemedicine visits, and even scheduling COVID vaccine appointments all require internet access.

As a contributing member of 5G Americas, Ericsson, together with other experts in North America, has delved into this topic in detail, producing a new white paper, “5G Fixed Wireless Access”, which provides insight into the benefits of 5G in fixed wireless access networks.

There has been much industry hype about 5G as a transformational technology for new use cases. From new consumer experiences with augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to new industry use cases like factory automation, 5G provides significant economic and societal benefit by closing the gap in performance to wired alternatives. Driving this is the high capacity and greater connectivity options that 5G will deliver to support new services and capabilities. One service that will be greatly enhanced by 5G is fixed wireless access. While cellular technologies have been used in the past to deliver fixed residential service, 5G has unique attributes that will deliver a better service to consumers.

FWA is a cost-effective method of delivering broadband to areas with limited fixed (wireline) broadband infrastructure. With 5G, advances in radio technology coupled with increased availability of spectrum improve the consumer experience that can be provided by wireless. With increasing demand for broadband everywhere including new federal investments to bridge the digital divide, there is a strong market opportunity for 5G FWA offerings.

Laying bare the digital divide

The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be a turning point for broadband. While we have known for many years that gaps in broadband availability exist, it took the pandemic to shine a bright light on the impacts and implications for individuals and society at large. As working from home became the norm for many and remote schooling via video conference replaced in-person classes for the better part of two school years, the need for quality and reliable broadband for everyone came into sharp focus. An Ericsson ConsumerLab & IndustryLab study  found that 83 percent of respondents claim Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has helped them cope with the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown (Connected consumers getting through the pandemic). In addition to school and work, the pandemic found us requiring socially distanced remote medical appointments, including video consultations, further stressing broadband networks and increasing bandwidth requirements. The chart below shows the range of requirements for various streaming services.

Ericsson analysis on Fixed Wireless Access shows that a typical household should experience a downlink data rate of at least 30Mbps during busy hour. (https://www.ericsson.com/en/fixed-wireless-access)

The global demand for residential broadband is projected to remain high even after the pandemic recovery, and 5G FWA will be the fastest-growing residential broadband segment. FWA is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 71 percent to exceed 58 million subscribers in 2026. Amid the pandemic, the worldwide residential broadband market reached a subscriber base of over 1.1 billion in 2020, growing 4 percent over the previous year. The increase of flexible working, with many companies allowing more remote employees, may also signal a growth in non-urban users of broadband services.

5G features that enable FWA

The 3GPP 5G standards (starting with Release 15 in late 2017) defined new features that provide benefits and enhance the capability beyond 4G services. These enhancements are summarized below.

Taken together, these improvements in radio access technology along with the increased amount of spectrum available to deliver 5G services mean that wireless 5G can now be used in a range of cases to meet residential demand.

User equipment

5G also brings enhancements to customer premise equipment (CPE). 5G devices allow for higher power classes, which allows connections from larger distances and enhances the reach of high frequency spectrum (> 15GHz), also known as millimeter wave (mmWave) or Frequency Range 2 (FR2) spectrum. This enables high speeds more akin to fiber and cable than traditional wireless networks.

This has been demonstrated in 2021 by Ericsson with our service provider partner UScellular along with Qualcomm and Inseego where 1 Gbps service was sustained at a distance of seven kilometers from the base station. (https://www.ericsson.com/en/press-releases/6/2021/5/uscellular-qualcomm-ericsson-and-inseego-address-digital-divide-with-multi-gigabit-extended-range-5g-milestone-over-mmwave).

Cradlepoint, now part of Ericsson, has a range of directional CPEs for both mmWave and Sub-6GHz 5G bands, the W4005 and W2005 respectively that enable FWA deployments in an enterprise environment, providing industry-leading wireless WAN connectivity.

Security

A final but important aspect of the 5G enhancements is the increased emphasis on security from both consumers and wireless service providers. 5G architectures are designed to close security gaps from previous generations of cellular networks, but the pervasive nature of 5G introduces new security challenges outside the traditional space. 5G’s attractive, transformative services will likely introduce threat vectors not yet seen or experienced.

A careful approach to these new aspects of cloud-native services, open-source software, application programming interfaces (APIs), software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) can improve their security. Additionally, taking a zero-trust approach combined with the advanced techniques of cyber threat intelligence and network slicing that 5G offers will further enhance 5G security

In conclusion, 5G enhances the deployment of FWA by utilizing existing spectrum capacity, introducing new, higher bandwidth frequencies previously unavailable in previous Gs, and bringing efficient and secure access to homes and businesses.

To learn more about 5G FWA, read the 5G Americas paper.