Microwave vs Fibre in the LTE marketplace.

Pete Norris - 10 March 2010

I've recently been bombarded by invites to webinars, webcasts and product exhibitions all preaching to me the value of microwave in the world of 3.5G+ and LTE. The sheer volume of them has me overwhelmed and I am sure network designers in other organisations are feeling the same way. I have seen an astronomical number of graphs all showing the cost comparison between fibre and microwave over 5, 10 and sometimes 20 year periods, all with the goal of reducing the £/Mbit ratio.

The corollary is that fibre based service providers are sat quietly not shouting about their offerings much at all.

This says to me that microwave vendors are concerned about their place in the world of LTE.

Should microwave vendors be concerned? Yes I think they probably should but there will clearly always be a need for Microwave.

We all know by now that microwave radio is capable of carrier grade services but also know that it is subject to limitations, LOS, planning permission and dish rights and of course Spectrum licensing all add to the cost of the link.

Meanwhile the cost of fibre is extraordinarily cheap for some really huge bandwidths, the kinds of bandwidth that enable next generation networks, and these costs are trending downwards! Add in some appealing technical features like very low latency and immunity to rain fade and you can understand why fibre is the first thought for network designers working on LTE.

That said of course there are sites, especially here in the UK, where the cost of civils for fibre is prohibitively expensive and that's where microwave connectivity really plays in the world of LTE. Extending the reach of the fibre networks to those hard to reach sites is extremely valuable and a weapon that all service providers should have in their kit bag!

The reduction of OPEX is interesting to everyone in the industry at the moment and while OPEX for tower/site space remains a necessary evil, the ongoing Spectrum costs can be vastly reduced by deploying light licensed Radio in the E Band Spectrum. Ultra narrow beamwidth antennas and the very nature of the frequencies used help protect you from interferers and the OPEX savings to be made are very attractive. The downside? Limited reach means that you can't make it play across the board and you have to pick your fights accordingly.

As a network designer I'd be a fool not to have a robust and rapidly deployable microwave solution for LTE in my armory but I still fully expect fibre to be the dominant physical transport technology for LTE, despite the hundreds of graphs I have been shown by microwave vendors! I guess that's the advantage of being able to design backhaul in a technology agnostic environment!

Add a comment