Charles, I think you should rephrase your statement - Cellular networks (especially in metropolitan areas) WERE built for coverage. With 4G services, they are built for capacity. I doubt the coverage metric will change in rural areas though.
There is also a major question on backhaul. Microwave backhaul may be equal for 2G/3G networks, but as 4G proliferates it will have a higher dependency on Fiber or 60GHz/80GHz short range high capacity backhaul. Most rural sites will only support 11GHz/6GHz for backhaul and therefore lower "found" capacity they could deliver via fixed wireless. On the other hand, WISP's can be nimble to all of these demands, at a much lower equipment cost. FTTH of course is a different metric altogether. Verizon wireline loves to plow fiber now. Anyways, my 2 cents. I could certainly be wrong :-) Daniel White -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Charles Wu Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2011 10:31 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] Verizon wants a piece of our pie I have a dissenting opinion... >It all comes down to a simple economics in the end. Who can most cost >effectively provide broadband. A cellular network is built for coverage Additionally, large companies, from a scale and operations perspective, will tend to put the same equipment everywhere What that means is in order to offer the nationwide network, that the tower in the rural area that's required to cover that stretch of highway where there's only a town of 1,000 people will have the same equipment and capacity as the tower in downtown Chicago that has 1,000 simultaneous users So in rural areas, where the costs of the tower, backhaul and base station have already been amortized and paid for to fulfill their coverage requirements, but many of these towers are sitting at 5-10% capacity In their mind, to add another 100 or so fixed wireless users off an AP and putting them in a lower QoS bucket (so the primary mobile customers aren't affected when fixed customers start slamming Netflix) is "found money" -- self installs are quite nice when putting out +60 dBi EIRP at the tower with 700 MHz on licensed spectrum with zero noise floor -Charles -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sam Tetherow Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 12:06 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] Verizon wants a piece of our pie At the end of the day when a WISP puts up a 'cell' site it is probably costing them 1/100th of what it costs the cellco to do so. The equipment used is most likely 1/100th the cost at the 'AP' and 1/10th at the CPE and the spectrum that the cellco uses is not free. Even when you take into account that the cellco operates on a much longer ROI and they can get some economy of scale on certain things I don't see how they can overcome the price difference to be able to effectively compete against a WISP, especially given their lack of spectrum. Sure you get a much better noise floor, but they have fewer channels to deal with. And from a cost perspective it is a lot harder to justify putting up micropops as a cellco. I know plenty of WISPs that can afford to put a micro-pop up for 3 customers. I do see how a cellco could afford to do that for eveny 20 times that number. Deep pockets only last so long when you are losing money. On 10/26/11 11:07 AM, Fred Goldstein wrote: > At 10/26/2011 11:42 AM, Chuck Hogg wrote: >> The "LIVE" network here does 26Mb x 22Mb with<70ms latency. > The VZW network isn't such bad competition for a WISP for two reasons. > > One -- those numbers you see are on the brand-new, unloaded network. > The've just started selling LTE gear this year, so the cells are > nowhere near full capacity. As they get busier, average capacity per > subscriber will go down, especially during busy hours. At some point > they will add cells, but I'm suspecting it's at a much lower > performance point than you're seeing now. > > Two -- their per-cell costs are much higher, and thus they have to > charge more for bulk usage. They have caps on their plans, and > additional usage is very costly. So while LTE is okay for the > vacation traveler looking to check email and read a few favorite web > sites, or the light home user, it's not going to appeal to even > moderate users. Even Sprint is starting to cap its plans, after > running a huge "unlimited" (uh, for the rest of the month?) > advertising campaign. > > > -- > Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com > ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ > +1 617 795 2701 > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > ---------- > WISPA Wants You! Join today! > http://signup.wispa.org/ > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > ---------- > > WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] > > Subscribe/Unsubscribe: > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- WISPA Wants You! 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