 | Issue: | North America I 2014 |
| Article no.: | 10 | |
| Topic: | Optical wireless broadband: The need for bandwidth in the zettabyte era | |
| Author: | Gerardo Gonzalez | |
| Title: | President & CEO | |
| Organisation: | SkyFiber Inc. | |
| PDF size: | 187KB |
About author
Gerardo Gonzalez is President and Chief Executive Officer of Skyfiber. A native of Mexico City, he has over 40 years’ experience in all aspects of the global Telecommunications industry. For 10 years, he was responsible for the manufacturing and sales for Northern Telecom’s subsidiary and for the establishment of its production facility. At Movitel del Noroeste, he oversaw sales approaching $80 million (U.S.) in cellular systems, and later served as VP of operations and Managing Director. In 1994, he joined Grupo Televisa as Managing Director for Comunicaciones Mtel, (Skytel), the largest paging company in México, and as Operations Director for Cablevisión, the largest cable company in México. In 1996 he became Regional Sales Director Latin America at Advanced Techcom Inc, providing microwave turn-key solutions, and Managing Director for the sales in México. In 1998, Mr. Gonzalez joined Grupo Salinas, as General Director for Audits, and later became General Director for RadioCel, CTO Groupo Salinas, and CEO for Telecosmo, the first Internet wireless service provider in México. Mr. Gonzalez then took on the role of General Director for Damovo Mexico, in 2005, Mexico’s main Ericsson distributor.
Mr. Gonzalez is also the founder and President of the Telecommunications & Consulting firms of Especialistas en omunicaciones y Servicios since 1983, which provides consulting services to key companies such as Grupo Iusacell, Avantel, Grupo Domos, Investcom-Protel, Grupo Acumen and Rockwell Switching. On June 2006, Mr. Gonzalez has appointed by the President of Mexico as a Commissioner at Cofetel (Mexican Telecommunications Regulatory entity), a role held until September 2008. He has received multiple nominations and awards, the most recently was granted on March 2009 by the National Polytechnic Institute Alumni, due to his excellent professional contribution.
Article abstract
The massive data traffic growth is, by all accounts, an impending bandwidth crunch crisis, which requires disruptive combinations of backhaul technologies. The pressure on radio frequency spectrum means that the limitless optical fiber gets a second look, despite the logistical challenges and the high installation costs. Microwave and Millimeter Wave (60-80Ghz) are also subject to spectrum availability. Optical Wireless Broadband can only operate where there is a line-of-sight. Hence, to meet the zettabyte era demand, Mobile Network Operators must make use of a balanced mix of all four main backhaul options: Fiber, Microwave, Millimeter Wave and Optical Wireless Broadband.
Full Article
In 2010, David Achim, then CIO of Skyfiber, Inc. stated that better access to faster wireless broadband networks is absolutely critical for today’s enterprises. That statement is still on target as we approach the zettabyte era of data storage. This era will require a tremendous amount of bandwidth to handle the storage and retrieval of this data. Optical Wireless Broadband (OWB) technology requires no RF spectrum. This also means that OWB does not have the interference and security issues of Microwave and Millimeter Wave and is virtually impossible to intercept.
A report by iGR Research Company in 2012 confirmed that the demand for mobile backhaul in the U.S. market will increase 9.7 times between 2011 and 2016. The unavoidable fact is that demand is increasing far faster than Mobile Network Operators can keep up. Cisco is forecasting a fourfold increase in traffic traversing the Internet by 2014. At that time it estimates traffic on the web will reach 63.9 exabytes per month — or more than 3/4 of a Zettabyte — according to its annual Visual Networking Index.
“Managing, storing and securing data is great, and you can do the best job in the world, but if users can’t easily access and use the data, is it valuable? If it’s not correct, is it useful?” – Steve Jones Interfaces April 23, 2009. According to the Cisco VNI Forecast and Methodology 2012-2017 report, “Annual global IP traffic will pass the zettabyte threshold by the end of 2015, and will reach 1.4 zettabytes per year by 2017. In 2015, global IP traffic will reach 1.0 zettabytes per year or 83.8 exabytes per month, and by 2017, global IP traffic will reach 1.4 zettabytes per year or 120.6 exabytes per month”. Cisco also predicts that traffic from wireless and mobile devices will exceed traffic from wired devices by 2016. By 2017, wired devices will account for 45%t of IP traffic, while Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 55% of IP traffic. In 2012, wired devices accounted for the majority of IP traffic at 59%. The T1’s and E1’s of our legacy voice networks simply cannot handle the bandwidth demands that the data and video-intensive businesses of today require. Fast Ethernet speeds have become a minimum requirement for an enterprise to truly operate competitively.
Operators and network owners everywhere are dealing with the same critical problems: exponentially increasing capacity demand, simultaneous decrease in revenue-per-bit and spectrum crunch. Across the industry, the quest to find a gigabit-capacity low-cost backhaul solution for mobile network expansion continues at a frantic pace. To truly differentiate from competitors, today’s Wireless Network Operators need to deploy a disruptive combination of backhaul technologies. Providers need a solution that can transform their network capacity in a fraction of the time and cost of current solutions, and can completely disarm the threat of the impending bandwidth crunch crisis.
The wireless industry’s capacity crisis is looming, and Mobile Backhaul is a key component in that crisis. Though not always considered the most interesting portion of a successful wireless network, these days Backhaul is becoming arguably the most important. The onslaught of capacity demand being driven by wireless devices and the rollout of 4G/LTE, requires Service Providers to deal with a level of capacity demand far greater than could have been imagined in the days of 2G/3G mobility. The advent of urban Small Cells, although specifically intended to address this rapid growth, will actually have the effect of accelerating capacity demand, as users explore new capabilities on wireless devices facilitated by faster networks.
Mobile Network Operators face a double-edged dilemma, because at the same time that demand is increasing exponentially, revenue-per-user and revenue-per-bit is flattening out. Global data traffic surpassed global voice traffic in 2007, and established the beginning of the “Data Era” according to Unstrung Insider Targeted Analysis 2007 and 2011. Ever since that crossover, the network operators have faced a major challenge in generating revenue from new higher-capacity services. As backhaul capacities transform from Megabits-per-second to Gigabits-per-second, the technologies and solutions chosen to provide this capacity must be capable of delivering significant economies of scale.
The other key challenge impacting Wireless Operators is the rapidly diminishing availability of spectrum. Wireless spectrum is a scarce and precious resource for Service Providers. In the FCC OBI Technical Paper No. 6, October 2010 Mobile Broadband: The Benefits of Additional Spectrum it predicts a deficit of 275 MHz by 2014. Network designers go to great lengths to maximize the aggregate network throughput in their network’s limited amount of wireless spectrum. As a result, there is a substantial need for cost-effective non-RF (Radio Frequency) solutions that can move backhaul traffic off overworked wireless frequencies.
According to the ITU, 4G mobile networks are defined as providing at least 100 Mbps peak capacity for high mobility applications, and 1 Gbps for stationary applications (‘Mobile Broadband Explosion’, Rysavy Research/4G Americas, August 2012). This massive jump in performance definitions from 3G to 4G is one of the key drivers for backhaul capacity needs, and is the main reason that the multiple T1/E1 copper circuits and Microwave links, which were previously sufficient for yesterday’s 3G backhaul, will be forced to transition to Fiber or higher-capacity wireless backhaul solutions.
Fiber continues to hold its place in the hearts and minds of the Telecommunications Industry as the preferred solution for backhaul. It is widely viewed as a time-proven technology that offers almost limitless capacity and scalability. Yet, Fiber is also one of the most expensive, difficult, and time-intensive capital expenditures a carrier can make. The reality is that pulling Fiber to every cell site is simply not feasible, not only due to cost issues, but also due to excessive logistical challenges. Time delays due to acquiring permits and lengthy construction for trenching also add to the complexities of Fiber installation.
Although traditional Microwave has played an important role in backhaul for 2G and 3G, the demands of 4G will exceed its capability. Microwave capacity tops at around 400 Mbps full-duplex due to the permitted limits placed on RF channel bandwidth. The term Millimeter Wave applies to any RF technology operation in the 30–300Ghz range, but is generally used to discuss 60-80Ghz equipment. Like other RF technologies, Millimeter Wave must also contend with spectrum availability issues.
Optical Wireless Broadband technology is the next generation of the Free Space Optics technology that originated in the 1960’s and first commercialized in the late 1990’s. Optical Wireless Broadband is a point-to-point, line-of-sight technology that delivers over 1 Gbps of bandwidth across a 1.6 km distance, for a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions. Optical Wireless Broadband is an infrared technology that contains features and capabilities including forward error correction, alignment tracking, integrated packet processing, and advanced optical laser and lensing techniques that make Optical Wireless Broadband’s reliability and capabilities much greater than traditional Free Space Optics technology.
The Wireless Industry is facing a major challenge to determine how to best augment existing network capacity capabilities to accommodate the ever-increasing mobile data demand. The capacity gap that we see today will continue to grow exponentially over the next several years. To meet this demand, Mobile Network Operators must combine the four main backhaul options – Fiber, Microwave, Millimeter Wave and Optical Wireless Broadband, as four parts of a complete backhaul solution set. No single solution will address all needs, and yet each one has its own particular area of highest value.
