Whilst the technology has been around for a long time and OCB has been using it extensively over the last 3 years, the technology has and is still progressing at a dramatic rate.
Why?
Companies small and large alike are investing in new fixed wireless services. Giants like Verizon and Telefonica are committing huge sums to the new tech and companies like Cohere Technologies from silicon valley are providing some remarkable physics to deliver the goods. It appears the whole telco sector is now a breeding ground for new wireless technologies.
Despite the fuss around 5G, the fixed wireless market is delivering a significant chunk of technology that will benefit the consumer at a massively reduced cost to market. Its been extremely challenging in Australia to make any money out of 4G, due to the cost of rollout and spectrum, so its unlikely that the big players will want to move onto 5G very soon. Fixed line, copper fed broadband through the NBN to the node program, coupled with congested and complex backhaul arrangements will never address the future requirements of the Australian public. The only answers are to be found in private fibre connections direct to the building and the emerging fixed wireless technologies. Both of these solutions are gigabit capable and future proofed against the inexorable increase in data consumption.
The other interesting by product of this march to wireless is that the barriers to entry into the market make it easy for new ISP’s to set up and drive customer choice. Ultimately the consumer can only benefit from this proliferation, in a market that has traditionally been strangled by monopolies, who by definition don’t need to work too hard on customer service or satisfaction!
Fixed wireless providers can enter non-urban markets at a tenth of the cost of laying fibre to the community. Couple that with some extraordinary advancements in non-line of sight technology, utilising zero cost public spectrum and physics that eliminates interference and you have a compelling commercial model layered with consumer benefits.
OCB continues to work with the global players in technology advancement and whilst we expect more competitors to appear in the near future, we also expect to be delivering in excess of 100 MBPS in the near future through these astonishing and disruptive technologies.
Andy Whitmore, Co-Founder, Our Community Broadband
