South Wireless Summit Coverage
There is up to $120 billion available today and over the next 10 years to bridge the digital divide, Bill D’Agostino, Jr., director, wireless of Frontier Communications said during the South Wireless Summit’s panel session: “Fixed Wireless Access.”
“So if somebody tells you it’s a funding issue,” he said. “It’s not a funding issue, It’s a meeting of the minds. It’s finding the right opportunities. It’s putting the right partnerships together, but there is plenty of money available to begin to close that digital divide.”
More than 30 million Americans today have broadband infrastructure that doesn’t provide minimally acceptable speeds, according to D’Agostino. He compared the effort to provide high-speed internet to all Americans to the electrification of the United States in the 1930s.
“Broadband is the new electricity,” he said. “I see building out high-speed infrastructure to cover 100 percent of rural America as the industry’s next greatest challenge.”
Frontier’s approach to fixed wireless has evolved over the last seven years, according to Carlos Cardona, the company’s director of architecture. Over the past three years, Frontier Communications has deployed fixed wireless covering 55,000 households.
“Due to our methodology of guaranteeing speeds and quality of service, we needed a technology that was reliable and would eliminate some of the technical challenges we experienced with sub-6 GHz deployments, as well as cost-effectiveness issues around the deployment process.”
Frontier’s Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) network is enabled with fiber and High QAM Microwave backbone networks, providing the necessary uplink capacity to support busy hour utilization, Cardona said. “That enhances the deployment process, providing higher QAM modulations to Rural America,” he said. “We are expanding our fiber and microwave backbone networks across our footprint.”
Spectrum has been a challenge for Frontier. The CBRS offers a different blend of priority access licenses, general access authorizations and incumbents in each area, which means Cardona must architect each wireless network differently.
“We just have to be creative,” he said. “You cannot cookie-cutter a wireless network. Every terrain is different.”
Frontier is increasing its speeds to better compete with satellite and cable companies by aggregating spectrum in different other bands, according to Cardona. And the company is looking for spectrum in the FCC’s Auction 110, which will sell flexible-use licenses in the 3.45 to 3.55 GHz in ten 10-megahertz blocks licensed by geographic areas known as Partial Economic Areas.
“Aggregating spectrum in Band 48 with various bands, including the LAA [License Assisted Access] band, you are going to shrink your coverage area but you will increase capacity,” Cardona said. “You are going to increase quad modulation, stability and provide rural America the higher data speeds that are required by the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF).” Frontier won nearly $371 million in funding to provide rural broadband internet coverage across 127,188 locations in eight states, Inside Towers reported.
With an additional 100 megahertz of spectrum, fixed wireless access networks can reach speeds of 1 Gbps to 2 Gbps, Cardona said.
“We are trying to build gigabit america,” Cardona said. “We can be there [in rural America] before the fiber gets there. With wireless networks, we can enable communities in the middle of nowhere with high speeds of 500 Mbps to a one gig with the millimeter wave solution, and combine that with the 60 GHz solution.” Frontier Communications is trying to keep its wireless deployment costs at about half of its fiber costs.
Cardona added that 60 GHz technology has matured to the point where it is stable enough and reliable enough to carry commercial service, which is important because of the FCC’s requirements of RDOF winners.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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